Masanori Asahara

About

Masanori Asahara was born in Chiba and raised in Tokyo, Japan. He is a professional dance artist based in New York City. Masanori is a core member of the Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary company LEIMAY led by artistic directors Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya. Masanori teaches, performs, and contributes to the development of the LEIMAY Ludus practice. He is an adjunct at Marymount Manhattan College and leads classes at LEIMAY’s studio, CAVE. As a company member, he has taught master classes and contributed to lecture demonstrations at MIT, the University of California Riverside, and the CUNY Graduate Center.

Masanori has performed at venues, including Brooklyn Academy of Music, Baryshnikov Arts Center, Brooklyn Museum, The Watermill Center, Ailey Citygroup Theater, The City Center Studio, The Flea Theater, The Gene Frankel Theater, HERE, Joyce Soho, BMCC Tribeca Performing Arts Center, Merce Cunningham Studio, St Mark’s Church and The Judson Church in New York; Kresge Theatre, Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh; Mesa Art Center in Arizona; The Tulsa Performing Arts Center William Theater in Oklahoma; Jacob’s Pillow and MIT in Massachusetts; and the Jorge Eliecer Gaitan Theater in Colombia.

Masanori has performed for sold-out houses in works such as Becoming- Corpus, borders, and Frantic Beauty at BAM Fisher. Publications such as the New York Times, TDR, and the Huffington Post, have reviewed these works. Dance critics such as Brian Seibert and Siobhan Burke and scholars Richard Schechner and Carol Martin have recognized LEIMAY’s work as a new approach to dance-making, acknowledging the merging of east and west through the incorporation of butoh dance, theater, and visual arts. Other LEIMAY works featuring Masanori included: Thresholds (2014), QualiaHolometaboly (2014), A Meal (2018-2024), Qualia (2016-2017), and Correspondences (2020~), among many others.

Masanori has also worked as a dancer for choreographers Kota Yamazaki, Yoshiko Chuma, Isabel Gotzkowsky, and Nathan Trice, among others.