No, they just lived out in this nowhere kind of neighborhood. Now it's like the suburbs but this place was too small to be called a suburb, they just lived on the edge of the country… it was on a really big piece of land, a third of an acre, maybe The neighborhood had one or two main streets and there was a creek down below. It got bigger every couple of years but started off very tiny. My father worked for a paper machinery company. He started out doing a lot of different jobs and ended up fairly high up in the company. My mother never worked, but she was a very good visual artist and dancer. The females — my sister, my mother, and I — were all really good dancers and very artistic. I'm not really a visual artist — not the way they were. Some paintings of my mother's are on our walls. The men — my father and brothers — are very mechanical, very detailed, very good with their hands.

As you were introduced to dance, was the physicalness or the artistic nature you were attracted to?

I think the combination, because I was always very physical. I swam, and at that time where I lived there weren't a lot of organized activities for kids. We just did what we did. When I drew or played music — I loved that! The expressive part about it. But it was the physical and the expressive coming together within my body which was the impetus for switching majors.The head of the Dance department — which was very small, but is a well-known dance department now — kept trying to convince me to switch majors. The third year I did an independent program abroad in Spain. At that time, if you can imagine — it was '68 and '69, okay --I didn't really go to school very much. I didn't get any credit. I spent time being stoned, hanging out… I mean, I was 20 years old in Europe. You know what was going on in Europe, with riots, and it was a big, big time in Paris and Berkeley…. I was just finding out who I was at 20 in Europe. At that time, even Franco was still in power. I didn't really do any dance lessons in Spain. I was kind of, laid back, I read Camus, stuff like that. And when I came back to the States and had to go through my third year over again, I spent a year doing early English music and took some art courses. Finally, I decided to take some other art courses to see if dance was really what I wanted to do. I kept on dancing, and it wasn't until I was a senior that I switched majors. When I came back from Europe, I realized that language was a very important tool for me. I also realized I was very interested in culture. But the arts, and, in particular, dance, was where I wanted to be. I studied Tamil when I lived in India, studied Japanese in Japan and the States. I spent a little time in Indonesia, off and on, and studied some on my own. I don't speak anything fluently — a little bit of German, I can converse somewhat in Spanish and French, and a little bit in Japanese. I love language. I'd love to be fluent in forty of fifty languages.

Do you find any correlation between your attractions to language and dance?

With the language of words, there is a certain amount of background, skill, and practice you need to have. But with movement, whether it's traditional — like kata, which means "pattern" in Japanese — or free-form contemporary. There's something about the human body and the sense of spirit within, in connection with the human body, that's a language unto itself. Some people talk about dance as being the universal language and, in a way, it is, but I think it's more metaphorical than literal.

So you went on to obtain a doctorate?

Well, some people can't believe all the interesting stuff I've done in my life, and I say well, you know, I'm 48. I've had a lot of years to do things. So I ended up majoring in dance at the University of Colorado. After my third year — when I came back from Europe and did another year, it was a hard transition to come back to the States. I just felt like the university community was too narrow… it was like this kind of utopia… a kind of hippie utopia, which was fine since I was a hippie, but I just did not want to be in that community right then. So, I moved to Steamboat Springs and was a ski bum for a year or two. Spent a lot of time in nature and the mountains and being outside anyway I could… being physical. Then went back to finish my degree in '70, graduated in '73, and then went down to Mexico for two or three months. I had studied a little bit of Indian dance at that point, and I decided to move to Berkeley where this well-known Indian dance teacher, Balasara-swati, taught in a summer program. I arrived there in my pickup at the beginning of summer. A lot of my relatives are from L.A. and I used to go visit a lot of friends in Northern California. I ended up moving there and going to this fabulous summer program called the Center for World Music. I remember opening the door where the school was at that time and seeing all these instruments, these different gamelan, Indonesian orchestras, in this huge hall of this beautiful old wooden church. All these instruments… my whole world opened up at that time… that summer was the richest summer. Language and living in Europe had planted seeds for really wanting to know more about the world. So when I was in Berkeley I studied North Indian drumming — Tabla — South Indian dance and vocals, and syllable repetition for rhythm. I played South Indian violin, played this clay pot — I just studied everything. I also danced with Laura Dean, who was very well known for her spinning in the old days — she was one of the best known post-modern pedestrian type choreographers. At that time she worked with the musician, Steve Reich. They had early English music, Indonesian music and dance, and some African. They had everything. A lot opened up for me and I continued to study Indian dance and vocals. Then I decided, since I was there, to go to Mills College, whereI got a Master's degree in Dance. I worked with different modern dance choreographers in the Bay Area and did contact improvision too. After that, I ended up living in New Zealand for 3 years. I taught at a university there. All of a sudden, I was an expert — the main dance teacher at the university. I also had studied Tai Chi in Berkeley and taught it in New Zealand, as well as modern dance and contact improv. Since my early college days I had been deeply interested in contemporary forms and how they were created.

Modern dance grew up mostly in the U.S. and Germany. I was curious about other countries — Asian countries. I wondered how young people, like myself, created contemporary forms… it was a search of mine for many years. I finally found it in Butoh — not that it's the only thing, but I really found something I had been searching for — that's why I have so much respect for Butoh. It's not easy to create a new artform. I don't like to call it a form, but a style, an aesthetic, and all that one has to break through, especially, if one comes from a traditional society. So many influences from other cultures… it's difficult to figure out who you are. So I'm finding out who I am as an artist through following the footsteps of Hijikata and and other Butoh people — it's become a discipline for me.