My First Overseas Performance
In the summer of 2025, Mademoiselle Cinema was fortunate to be invited to San Diego, a city on America’s West Coast, for exchange performances. The work presented there, “Woman Is a Journey,” was created from the immigration experience of choreographer Naoko Ito’s grandmother, who went to America as a picture bride. Its presentation in a city with many immigrants of Japanese descent elicited a strong response. Mayuko Akimoto reports on the experience on behalf of the six dancers who made the journey.
Mayuko Akimoto
San Diego performance
From July 22 to 30, 2025, we performed in America (San Diego). Alongside our presentation of “Woman Is a Journey,” we also performed at a church and a kindergarten.
Going to America took courage for me, as I had never left Asia before. Could I endure the long flight? Would anything go wrong at immigration? Would I have frightening experiences there? Would I get back to Japan safely? I remember one worry after another surfacing before departure, with nervousness outweighing anticipation.
San Diego performance
I joined Mademoiselle Cinema in spring 2020. In the midst of the pandemic, we could not even gather for rehearsals, and sometimes I learned choreography at home by watching videos. Many performances were streaming-only, and it was a time when it was hard to feel that I was actually onstage. Whenever members told me about past overseas performances, I longed for that experience, but I could hardly picture myself performing abroad: it felt like something in a distant world. For me, being “under restrictions” was normal from the very beginning of my activities with Mademoiselle Cinema. Not being able to gather with people, not being able to stand onstage before an audience, and continuing to dance amid an uncertain future were everyday life itself, even before I thought of them as particular hardships. That is why I approached this overseas performance less as an achievement of “finally coming this far” and more simply as a challenge to face a new experience.
Performance on the eve of San Diego
During this stay in America, I met people with truly varied backgrounds: people born and raised in America, immigrants from Mexico, people of Japanese descent. There was a natural atmosphere of respecting one another as “individual personalities,” rather than by nationality or place of origin. That attitude overlapped with something I value myself. After our church performance, an elderly Japanese woman living there said to me, “Women are strong in every era, aren’t they?” Hearing those words, I felt that the anxieties and experiences I had carried might overlap, just a little, with the resolve and strength of the picture brides of 100 years ago.
Workshop in San Diego
Placing myself in a different environment strengthened my sense of acceptance of Japan as a place and of who I am now. Although this was my first overseas performance, I think I did not see it as more special than necessary because, having started my activities during the pandemic, it had become natural for me to steadily face the expression in front of me, whatever the circumstances. Even when the environment changes, what I need to do does not. Confirming that feeling gave me a small measure of confidence that, wherever I dance in the future, I can approach it with a firm center.
