Benjamin Akio Kimitch is an artist and producer based in Brooklyn, NY. He is the recipient of an Asian Cultural Council Fellowship, a Bessie Award for Outstanding Choreographer/Creator, and a Mertz Gilmore Foundation Dancer Award.
Alongside his artistic practice, Kimitch is a producer for new opera, music, theater, and dance at Perelman Performing Arts Center (PAC NYC). As choreographer, Kimitch has been commissioned to make new work for The Shed, The Kitchen, Danspace Project, and Princeton University; and has been presented by the Noguchi Museum and Jacob’s Pillow Dance Festival. In 2023, he began an ongoing, collaborative U.S. and Japan research project with choreographer Yasuko Yokoshi. He has been awarded artistic residencies at MacDowell, Yaddo, Movement Research, Maggie Allesee National Center for Choreography, and others. He will embark on an Asian Cultural Council Fellowship in Kyoto, Japan in fall 2025.
At MacDowell, Kimitch dove into early research for a new contemporary dance work that will premiere in New York City in 2026. At the center of his inquiries and world-building are medieval Japanese Gagaku court performance and postwar art-movements in both Japanese America and U.S.-occupied Japan from the 1940s–60s.
Portrait by Da Ping Luo
