Could you begin by sharing some of your personal history?

I grew up in Wisconsin, the youngest of 4 children. We lived about 15 minutes outside a town of about 30,000. It was a newer community on the edge of a farming community. I went to a really small country school for a lot of the early years and never had a lot of friends my own age… so I spent a lot of time by myself, or with my siblings playing outside, doing things like swimming in a nearby creek, playing in cow patties, climbing trees, you know, stuff like that. It was a really great place to grow up. We had a huge yard, neighbors knew each other, you were really free to roam… you had a lot of freedom and it was very safe at that time. I had a very carefree childhood, very much with nature. When I became involved with Butoh, I realized it was a return to my roots, in a way, to be connected with the earth and nature….

Hijikata mentions something similar about going back to his childhood.

Right. For me, it was directly related to playing in nature and having the freedom to do that, but just like Hijikata,we had very severe winters — we used to build igloos. I remember one time, we went skiing… we had these really old skis… we'd go skiing down the neighbor's hill, and I just remember being frozen and crying. I remember sometimes there'd be huge thunder storms — and the rain would come down really hard — "Keeh!" (sound of thunder) — and there'd be these puddles, especially out near our long driveway which had gravel and all these trees. This one big tree and this big puddle — seems like I was always playing in those when there were thunder and lightning storms. I have a lot of memories.

I didn't really have much exposure to any other cultures when I was small, mostly because I was out near the country. Maybe once in a while, I'd meet someone from somewhere else. I was very physically active and very innovative. My friends and I would create these fairs and we'd even rent ponies. We'd show movies in our basement and sell popcorn. We had a club up in a big tree near the creek, about 4 or 5 of us. We had this club where each person was responsible for coming up with some topic. I was 10, 11, 12 years old, really young, and we'd do research on some topic and then give a lecture or presentation to members of the club… topics like birds or rocks, or rockets, or anything.

I remember another time, our next-door neighbor kids and I somehow had a daycare center going on. I was really enterprising — we used to sell baked goods around the neighborhood… but that's probably nothing unusual. My sisters and brothers before me used to have big parades down the road. I took some English-style horseriding for a couple of years and did figure skating when I was about 10 or 11. That was my first introduction to dance. I always loved to dance.

In the summer, I went to a special skating school and did some ballet, I didn't realize until years later that that's what I had done because I wasn't so familiar with certain styles of dance. I also played in a band in junior high — saxophone and clarinet. I had a tiny bit of modern dance, in high school a little bit more. I was part of a modern dance club — that's when I realized that, even though I was a pretty good musician, that with my body I just felt really comfortable… there wasn't any kind of hesistation.That memory prompted me to pursue dance in college, but it was in high school, where I studied Spanish for quite a number of years, that I decided to become a language major. I went to the University of Colorado as a Spanish and French major, then I started dancing there and changed my major.