Benjamin Kamino
Artist & Curator
Benjamin Kamino is a dancer who believes the field of dance & choreography to be a very special place in which humans are invited to study qualities of the body (corporeality), the self (identity), and relation (togetherness). Kamino’s dances are intentionally conceptual, always pursuant to wondering how bodies interact with materials as emerging choreographic events. He is thankful for those dear times of collaboration with other artists, most notably with Ejay Smith, Daina Ashbee, Sook-Yin Lee, Virgil Baruchal, his brother, Alex Kamino, his father, Tim Kamino, and his mother, Gabby Kamino. As a dancer, he has been fortunate to work under the direction of Peggy Baker, Michael Trent, Ame Henderson, Jennifer Mascall, Gerry Morita, Lars Jan, Marie Chouinard, Robin Poitras, and Clara Furey. Kamino was an inaugural curator at Dancemakers Centre for Creation in Toronto alongside colleague Emi Forster. He is the recipient of the 2016 Toronto Arts Foundation Emerging Artist Award, the 2013 Audience Choice Award at the Dance:MIC festival, and the 2009 DanceWeb Scholarship. Kamino holds a BFA in Dance from the Tisch School of the Arts and an MA in Choreography from DAS Choreography.
Curatorial Statement
My artistic vision is rooted in acting as a site for a multiplicity of aesthetics and ways of understanding dance, and artists who are deeply curious, working through dance to investigate essential questions of the form. I program artists who do not hold a prescriptive view of how they choreograph or what dance is, who challenge the formal boundaries of dance (or refine them), and who engage in research-based forms of practice. I work predominantly with artists in contemporary dance or contemporary expressions of a diversity of forms.
I am committed to risk. I believe that by creating space and time for artists to safely question and clarify their practices, the field and audiences for contemporary dance will benefit. By creating a culture of more confident, more literate, more practiced artists in this form, and programming to connect these artists with interested publics, I aim to connect these artists with publics who are equally confident, literate, and curious about the potentialities of dance in all its expressions.
