Safaia
Choreographer, Digital Dance Creator, Dance Lecturer (incl. SENschools)
Safaia trained wide range of dance styles from classical ballet to street dance since aged 3. In her high-school, her first choreographic work ‘firebird’ won the first prize in State Dance Competition, Japan.
After moved to UK, she joined a Hip-hop dance company and won the World Hip-Hop Championship. She completed her BA Dance Studies and MA Choreography, and her PhD: ‘Intercultural Virtual Dancing Subject: A choreographic investigation of spatio structures in Japanese-Western cultural practice’ in University of Bedfordshire in 2014.
She worked as a street dance teacher at Step Into Dance Programme led by Royal Academy of Dance between 2008- 2014, also a dedicated choreographer at Hampton Community College.
Safaia is a versatile UK-Japanese Intercultural choreographer and dance artist. She specializes Contact Improvisation, Street Dance and Choreography by fusing lived body and creative movements into digital forms with intercultural sense. creativity in collaborations with various artists around the world made great contribution to the works with many prizes in USA and Europe.
Upon her return to Japan, she worked with Association for Corporate Support of the Arts, developing and delivering programs to promote corporate support in arts in Japan, and a 3-year program funded by The Japan Foundation Asia Center, ‘Research and Conference in Facilitating Corporate Support for the Arts Activities and Establishing a Network in ASEAN Countries (2014- 2018).
She has been lecturing various dance styles and Contact Improvisation from children to professional level in schools, universities and communities. She has also developed and delivered educational dance programs for disabled children in order to nurture their creative senses and dance skills with or without disabilities as well as to encourage their mental well-being , which was collaboratively a part of the Cultural Olympiad for the Tokyo Olympics 2020-2021.
Safaia is currently a specially appointed associated professor at International Budo University in Japan.
