Degenerate Art Ensemble
Photo by Steven Miller
The 2025 Bessie Award winning company Degenerate Art Ensemble, led by Haruko Crow Nishimura and Joshua Kohl, has shown their work throughout the US and Europe known for their large scale dance and theater projects, concerts, site-transforming spectacles and ongoing public experimentation.
Recent highlights of the group's work include a major exhibition at the Frye Art Museum in 2011, was commissioned by director Robert Wilson to interpret his work Einstein on the Beach in 2012 and collaborated with the Kronos Quartet in 2013. Also in 2012 Degenerate Art Ensemble was commissioned by the city of Seattle to create a massive site specific work Underbelly in collaboration with Olson Kundig Architects to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Seattle World’s Fair. The group’s 2015 work Predator Songstress premiered at the Yerba Buena Center in San Francisco in 2015. In of 2016 DAE teamed up with Czech rock legends Uz Jsme Doma for an epic orchestral work inspired by the group's music at the Archa Theatre in Prague with the South Bohemian Philharmonic Orchestra. DAE’s work Skeleton Flower was first seen as a work in progress at the Spotlight USA Festival in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, had its world premiere in Seattle in 2019, was performed at the International Festival of Contemporary Dance in Mexico City in August of 2021. Their recent collaboration with sculptor Senga Nengudi and musician/dancer Eddy Kwon was commissioned by Colorado College and the Contemporary Art Center of Cincinnati and was performed at New York Live Arts. Their newest work Anima Mundi premiered at the Moore Theatre in Seattle presented by Seattle Theatre Group.
