Sakurako is an artist, performer and choreographer/director working worldwide and mostly in situ. Currently she lives & works in her hometown Vilnius after 20 years spent abroad, leading dance-theatre company Okarukas as an artistic director and choreographer.
Although Sakurako was trained as a conceptual & visual artist, she also has been practicing martial arts and various dance and movement techniques after graduating from Fine Arts (Rietveld Academy in Amsterdam) in 2008. She studied tradition Japanese Noh theatre and contemporary dance butoh with various masters in Japan. She also has a pedagogy degree and teaches butoh at Lithuanian Music and Theatre academy and teaches art and theatre/dance and gives workshops worldwide.
Sakurako creates live performances balancing on the edge between performance art, theatre and dance. The works are conceptual with strong visual elements where the main focus is on presence and the authenticity of movements and gestures. Human condition is the main subject matter of her works as an ongoing investigation of the body/mind/spirit phenomena.
Sakurako presented works at various venues worldwide: Palacio De Bellas Artes (Mexico City), Le 104, Le Cube, Théâtre du Temps, (Paris), OT301, Paradiso, Oostblook Theatre, Oude Kerk (Amsterdam), Mažasis teatras, Menų Spaustuvė (Vilnius), SCCA Center for Contemporary Arts (Ljubljana), Äkkigalleria (Jyväskylä), UrBANGUILD (Kyoto), Cultuur Centrum (Mechelen), Musée des Beaux-Arts (Limoges), etc.
She participated in various festivals: Nuit Blanche (Paris), Aura (Kaunas), New Baltic Dance, (Vilnius), Juli Dans (Amsterdam), Rappongi Art Night (Tokyo), Festival d’Aurillac (France), Pukkelpop (Belgium), Red Dawns, City of Women (Slovenia), Gogol Fest (Ukraine), “Exit!” Schloss Broellin (Germany) and Venice Art Biennale’11 (Italy).
