Mayu Nakaya
Mayu Nakaya is a dancer and choreographer from Japan. She moved to New York City in 2019 and studied at The Ailey School scholarship program for 2 years.
Currently, she is a member of the sarAika Movement Collective and the improvisation based company Open Dance Ensemble with Philip Ellis Foster. In Addition, she has presented her solo piece at several showcases as a freelance artist.
She started ballet training when she was 3 years old. After then, she learned contemporary dance and choreography, gaining a lot of performing experience, at the Contemporary Dance Course in the Performing Arts Department at Tokyo Metropolitan High School of Arts and at the Dance Laboratory at University of Tsukuba of Physical Education. From 2016 to 2019, she participated at several dance competitions in Japan at the Soul International Dance Competition, dancing her own choreographies, always qualifying as a finalist and winner.
While at The Ailey School, she met and worked with Helen Simoneau in the New Direction Choreography Lab. As the school's representative dancer, she participated in the Macy's parade on Thanksgiving Day(2019), the piece by Jessica Castro at the Judy Chicago, Brooklyn Museum for the International Women's Day celebration project(2020), a dance class demonstration of television coverage.
She has also danced pieces by Jesse Obremski and Jie-Hung Connie Shiau at DANCING BEYOND 2022 organized by Earl Mosley's Diversity of Dance.
