Taiko is alive and well in the Twin Cities!
General Work and Academic Resume
My taiko experience:
The Logistics
February 2017-present:
- CLASSES: through June 2019, recitals, Ordway community performance fall 2017 with TAM; Member of Kionline (Ingmar Kikat from Kion Dojo in Hamburg) 2020-2022; online Katsugi classes with Eri Uchida from 2021-2023, “Tabi Camp” with Rome Hamner, an eight-week course on teaching taiko.
- WORKSHOPS: TaikoBaka (2018 and 2023 Sacramento), Connect (August 2018 Washington D.C.), 4th European Taiko Conference (February 2019, Hamburg, Germany), NATC (August 2019 Portland), kaDON Retreat (October 2019 Beulah, WI), ELEVEN Gathering (March 2020 Hamburg), European Taiko Expo 2021+1 (October 2022), Shodaiko weekend workshop with Jonas of the Taiko Bastards in Germany, Taiko Heidelberg (January 2024), The Magic of Groove (ELEVEN) fourteen-hour workshop with Kaoly Asano by kaDON with TAM in St. Paul, Minnesota (August 2024), NATC-R Seattle (August 2024) participant, plus multiple local workshops with professional artists: Yuichi Kimura, Unit Souza, PJ Hirabayashi, Tiffany Tamaribuchi, Taiko Project, Ingmar Kikat, Sascha Molina, ManMan Mui, and Kaoly Asano.
- PERFORMANCE: Member of Taikollaborative since June 2019 and former member of Harisen Daiko (2018-2024). At workshops, I am grateful for every opportunity to play on community stage with others.
- ORGANIZATION: arranged and ran bi-weekly taiko drills sessions open to community members, fall 2019-Feb 2020, 2022 to present. Feb 2020 organized large taiko practice for about fifty participants.
- PROJECTS: 2020 founder of Chōchō! Beating with Perspective;
2021 founder of questionnaire project called Powers of Taiko, presented at the European Taiko Expo 2021+1 in Hamburg;
March 2023, founder of Taiko Shine! (aka Recovery Taiko) instructional program;
co-founder of Chōdaiko group, January 2024.
The Personal
My great personal growth started in 1990 when, at twenty-one, I put myself into a supportive treatment program. A family member gave me my first beer when I was nine years, and I continued drinking until I was twenty-one. The drinking became dangerous because I ended up in situations in which I was hurt physically: I survived too many rapes, three of them statutory and countless close calls, grabs, etc. But I always felt lucky that I was never assaulted with any kind of weapon or outright gang raped.
I did tons of emotional work in workshops, different kinds of groups, and talk therapy while in college. At some point I was diagnosed with (CPTSD) Complex Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, which made sense to me. Nevertheless, I ended up writing a ground-breaking dissertation on sexual violence.
The seven-year project helped me as much as it hurt me, and afterward I did not take a job as a professor because finally being in a safe place, having finished my degrees, I needed to let my first three decades of life settle. I also wanted to be sure that my daughter (and later son) received a different kind of childhood than I had had.
After my kids were older, I sought out new hobbies and finally in January of 2017, at the women’s march in St. Paul, Minnesota I saw taiko for the first time and knew I needed to do that. Since then, I have enthusiastically let it and the community fill my life and my heart.
At the same time, something about the power of taiko has also led me to many days filled with deep grief or tears because of new memories of and realizations about sexual abuse I have had since playing taiko.
I realize different hobbies or art forms that I could have found may have brought me to these surges of growth and emotional stretching. Still, I feel there is something special about the power of taiko, its community, its musicality, its noise, and the necessity to move as we do while playing. I feel all this pushed me in ways that other art forms or hobbies may not have.