Hanako Hoshimi-Caines is a multiform experimental dance artist working in the expanded field of choreography, sculpture and community practice. She works in solo and collaborative formats using the structure of performance as a conceptual framework to get intimate with the messy stuff of life. She leans into delight, subverted logics and the spirit of error as methods to experience the quiver of things and as tools toward abstraction seeking opportunities for resistance, newness and unexpected belonging.

Her material and performance practices span theatres, art galleries and community spaces. Most recently, Material Stargazer bridges community work and experimental art to imagine futures in collaboration with community organizations and theaters across the island of Montreal. Radio III / ᎦᏬᏂᏍᎩ ᏦᎢ (2019-ongoing), an internationally co-authored dance work with Zoë Poluch (SE) and Elisa Harkins (US), has been shown at the MAI (CA), Portland Institute for Contemporary Art/TBA festival, On the Boards (US), Moderna dansteatern (SE), Fierce Festival (UK) and plastic orchid factory (CA). Her solo works sent.d.iments (2017-2021) and Holographic Ki (2021-2023) have been shown at MAI, OFFTA festival, Leonard & Bina Ellen Gallery and Galerie de l’UQAM (CA).

Hanako’s career as a dancer has led her to perform with a range of choreographers and companies, such as the renowned Cullberg Ballet in Stockholm (2010-2012), Andrew Tay and Stephen Thompson (Make Banana Cry), Frédérick Gravel and José Navas. As a collaborator she has worked, and continues to work, alongside Ellen Furey, Maria Kefirova, Eric Craven, Nien-Tzu Weng, Erin Hill, Emma-Kate Guimond, Adam Kinner, Jordan Brown, Justin de Luna, Nadège Grebmeier-Forget, Katya Montaignac, Véronique Hudon, Lhasa de Sela, Tanya Lukin-Linklater, Clara Furey, Simon Portigal, Socalled, Ivanie Aubin-Malo, Louise-Michel Jackson, Jacob Wren, Winnie Ho and Katie Ward.

Her involvement in dance is rooted in critical practice and hanging out with great people. She has organized discussion groups, shared studio frameworks and particularly values working across age and culture, regularly supporting RECAA (Respecting Elders Communities Against Abuse) and collaborating with their elder members. As artistic co-curators at the CCOV (2020-2023), Hanako and Nate Yaffe had the privilege of guiding artists from a wide range of styles and backgrounds in their career development and artistic processes. They put forward a people-centered curatorial vision with a focus on wellbeing and experimental gatherings, organizing large-scale multidisciplinary events and the much loved series Signal Vibrant: Ceremony for the dead and Penpals/Relations épistolaires.

Hanako graduated from the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Danse et de Musique (Lyon, France). Always seeking deeper truths and higher purposes, she completed a Bachelor of Arts Degree with Honours in Western Philosophy from Concordia University (2020) with a focus on gender studies and performativity, and trainings in CranioSacral (2023), Reiki (2024), transformative mediation with Community Justice Initiative (2023) and Collective Trauma Healing with Thomas Hübl (2021). She puts these ongoing studies to use in support of her multidimensional artistic and life commitments through writing and contemplative bodywork practices.

Hanako (she/they) is mixed Japanese-European ancestry, first generation in so-called Canada, born and based in Tiotiá:ke/Montréal.

photo by Caroline Desilets