Our Mission
KAMBARA+ is more than Artistic Director Yayoi Kambara. Through multi-hyphenate collaboration (dance, tech/digital interactive media, and music), KAMBARA + works with dancers, performers, and creatives to research and play. Together, we build projects - ultimately to cultivate a sense of belonging.
Founder/Artistic Director
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Founder/Artistic Director: Yayoi Kambara started her career as a professional dancer and currently directs and produces multi-media performance works, including film and XR (extended reality). In 2023 Kambara was recognized as a female stage director by Opera America. She was a co-interrogator of Izzie Award Winning Dancing Around Race and also a 200-hour certified yoga teacher. She is currently a PhD Student at UC Riverside. KAMBARA+ was founded in 2015 after Kambara’s retirement as a company member at ODC/Dance with a mission to create multidisciplinary performances that cultivate belonging.
THE TEAM
General Manager
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General Manager: Tiffany Schmidt (she/her) is an artist living in Dayton, Ohio working remotely as a company manager and producer for KAMBARA+. Tiffany received a B.A. in Dance with a Business Cognate in 2020 from the University of Akron where she was a member and treasurer of Terpsichore Dance Club and student assistant for The University of Akron - Dance Institute. She is a recent graduate of the APAP (Association of Performing Arts Professionals) Emerging Leadership Institute. Tiffany plays a vital role in the organization by overseeing producing, grant writing, accounting, social media, scheduling and other key administrative tasks that keep KAMBARA+ running smoothly.
Board Members
Rehearsal Director
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Leesha Zieber (they/them) is a white-passing QTPOC dance artist based in San Francisco. They grew up moving and grooving in Santa Cruz before graduating summa cum laude from San Francisco State University with a B.A. in dance and mathematics. Leesha has had the pleasure of working with RAWdance, ayanadancearts, and Dance Brigade among others. They have been collaborating with KAMBARA+ since 2016. As rehearsal director, Leesha handles the administration of rehearsal space, KAMBARA+ archiving, and scheduling for all dance rehearsals ensuring the company's operations are well-organized and efficient.
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Yayoi Kambara has been a Bay Area artist since 2000. Kambara was a company member with ODC/Dance 2003–2015 and danced as a freelance artist with numerous Bay Area Dance Companies including Sara Shelton Mann Contraband, Scott Wells and Dancers, Flyaway Productions, Deborah Slater Dance Theater, STEAMROLLER, and Pearl Ubungen Dancers and Musicians. She was the Rehearsal Director for AXIS Dance Company during Judith Smith's sabbatical in 2015 and continues to teach company class for AXIS. Kambara currently choreographs and creates staging for Opera Parallel, and Center for Contemporary Opera integrating visual design, including film, with voice and physical storytelling.
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Susie Williams is an arts administrator, facilitator and producer with over 20 years of experience in the culture sector. In the beginning of her career she performed flying trapeze and aerial acrobatics in both traditional and contemporary circus. She currently serves as Director of Operations and Productions at SANCA (School of Acrobatic and New Circus Arts). More recently, she served as Managing Director of Acrobatic Conundrum and facilitated the reactivation of the Georgetown Steam Plant. Susie taught circus technique at Aerial Arts NYC, STREB, Trapeze School New York and Pace University. She has a BA in theater from Northwestern University, was a Fellow in the BAM (Brooklyn Academy of Music) Professional Development Program and is a graduate of the APAP (Association of Performing Arts Professionals) Leadership Fellows Program. She loves performing arts of all varieties and is serious about playing tennis for fun. Susie lives in Seattle with her beau, three step daughters and one very bouncy dog.
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OUR STORY
KAMBARA+ was founded in 2015 after her retirement from ODC Dance as a vehicle to produce her choreography, focusing on producing dance performance experiences that cultivate a sense of belonging. KAMBARA+ defines equity as belonging. As a creative partner in the studio, performer, or in the audience, belonging is the bridge built to narrate and perform new dynamic works. In her choreographic work, Kambara is interested in the authentic voice of the body and its inherent identity in performance. She focuses her choreography on diverse cultural, economic, and ethnic differences by creating space for empathy and dialogue. In a world becoming alarmingly more conservative and segregated, taking time to create with a diverse cast is her way of preserving optimism as dance can represent the ineffable resiliency of the human spirit to continue in the face of uncertainty.
Currently Kambara is curating a dance performance series at the Asian Art Museum responding to the varied diasporic histories within the Asian American community. She is finishing the final months of the 4th cohort of Association of Performing Arts Professionals Leadership Fellows, a program co-directed by Kenneth Foster and Krista Bradely. She is also a lead artist for Hope Mohr Dance's Bridge Project and leads Aesthetic Shift, a yearlong Community Engagement Residency. Aesthetic Shift is an exchange between dance educators, social justice activists, dancers and choreographers dedicated to interrogating and analyzing the overlap between equity values, creative practices, and organizations.
