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Ito Yosakoi was founded in January 2017 by Jeremy Chan. We hold our rehearsals in Nagata Dance Studio in San Francisco Japantown in California, USA. The "ito" (糸) in our name means "thread" or "tapestry"; that, plus some of the moves we use in our dances use elements of water and wave (like in Yosakoi Soran) so you could say our dance weaves our community together with the strength of an ocean wave!

Jeremy started dancing yosakoi in college, as part of the Nikkei Student Union’s yosakoi dance team at UC Berkeley. Years after graduation, Jeremy finally realized his dream of starting a group of his own in San Francisco Japantown, as a way of giving back to the Japanese American community. Today, he co-leads the group with Jenna Pollack, who has many years of yosakoi experience from both college and while serving in the JET Programme in Japan. Jeremy sees many parallels between the message of yosakoi and Japanese American solidarity efforts to fight against discrimination.

Ito Yosakoi regularly performs at local festivals (such as the annual Cherry Blossom Festival) and community events. We perform original choreography as well as sou odori (dance that invites audience participation) such as "Yocchore" and "Iwauta.”

In 2018, we were invited to be certified as Yosakoi Ambassadors by the government of Kochi. We traveled into Kochi, received our holy plaque, a gift of flag, and the task to continue preserving and spreading yosakoi outside of Japan. We're also grateful for the opportunity to experience the Yosakoi Festival -- to say it opened our eyes is an understatement.

We're excited to perform in Kochi with teams from other countries. We welcome your help in making our project happen!

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YouTube channel ← check out our performance!