Nissa Nishikawa is a Canadian-Japanese performance and dance artist based in Hackney, London. Her multidisciplinary practice comprises performance, poetry, painting, sculpture, ceramics, glass, and moving image, researching and interpreting traditional forms of dance, ritual, and craft in ways that illuminate animistic and alchemical philosophies with an embodied and structural approach. She often works in open-air settings and studios equipped to house fire, interconnecting the layers of the arcane with the supra-sensual, the living earth and various conscious inhabitants. She holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts from Concordia University in Montréal and a Masters in Performance from Goldsmiths, University of London, having also studied Stage Arts at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. In her formative years, she trained with dancer/farmer Min Tanaka in Yamanashi, Japan, and has been influenced by experiences with Steve Paxton, Anna Halprin, and dervish turning of the Mevlevi tradition. Her site-specific performances have taken place at locations including the Archaeological Zone Tepozteco in Mexico and Abu Gorab Temple in Egypt.
