Tashi Iwaoka, a Turku based performance artist/mover/Butoh practitioner studied Contemporary Arts BA(Hons) at Nottingham Trent University (1997-2001 Nottingham UK), Dance and Choreography as a guest student at School for New Dance Development (2002-2003 Amsterdam NL) and Performance Research at DasArts (2004-2007 Amsterdam NL).

After his first Butoh experiences in 1997 with Kazuo Ohno and Kim Itoh in Japan, Iwaoka practiced Butoh based bodywork for over 10 years. Since 2010 he is deeply influenced by Budo, Japanese martial arts, and working on finding the nucleus of human expression and connection, in relation to the movement skills he has learnt. One of the central driving forces for this is the attempt to fuse his oriental roots and Western perspectives to form a more proper view on ‘being a human’ in this world. He wishes to disinter the universality of Eastern wisdom in order to help us understand what it is to be a human.

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