MARIKO ISHIKAWA

Mariko Ishikawa, originally from the San Francisco Bay Area*, is a dancer, choreographer, collaborator, and educator. She holds her MFA in Dance Performance from the University of Iowa, where she was an Iowa Arts Fellow and her BA in Performing Arts and Liberal Studies from Saint Mary's College (LEAP). Her research contains eco-somatics, screendance, classical ballet technique, and Cunningham-based technique. 

Mariko has performed professionally with Albany Berkshire Ballet, Mandance Company San Francisco, Menlowe Ballet, Imaginatio Arts, eMotion Arts, New Ground Theatre Dance Company, and currently with Black Box Dance Theatre and Black Irish. She has worked with choreographers such as Michael Lowe, Sarah-Jane Measor, Reginald Ray Savage, Ronn Guidi, Viktor Kabaniev, Alyssa Mitchel, Mariana Sobral, Michelle Pearson and Ron West. She has been invited to perform with the Youth American Grand Prix New York Finals (2009 to 2012), Peninsula Youth Ballet, Diablo Ballet, ODC Pilot, San Francisco Movement Festival, among others. In 2012, she won the prestigious San Francisco Beach Blanket Babylon Scholarship for the Arts. 

For the past 15+ years, Mariko has been devoted to educating students in the art of dance and performance. Mariko has taught at the University of Iowa, as well as at numerous schools in the San Francisco Bay Area, where she set multiple full-length productions, mentored both students and instructors, directed and built dance curriculums and served the community through artistic engagement, leading discussions, and creating accessible resources.

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*written in acknowledgment of the ancestral territory of Ramaytush Ohlone (SF) and the Miwok, Yokuts, Patwin, and other Ohlone (Greater Bay Area).