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Anima Mundi

(current) Anima Mundi is a modern animist epic that fuses visceral dance, live music, intricately crafted materials and projected imagery to conjure a world of spirit beings and shadows. Inspired by ancient ritual, Japanese supernatural woodblock prints and visits to animal sanctuaries, Anima Mundi confronts our human-centric perceptions that devalue our sensorial intelligence, and serves as a meditation on the joy of interconnectedness with the rest of the natural world. A woman walks into the forest and discovers a portal leading to the source of the soul. Transformed into a Marebito spirit being, she navigates the realms of our present-day disconnect, moving through dimensions where she finds herself in a factory-farm cage or summoning cars to life in an abandoned parking lot. This multifaceted story is inspired in part by the Aruki Miko, roaming female shamans who performed rites across ancient Japan before their powers were diminished by patriarchal forces. Working with light shown through textured washi paper, the work allows playful ghosts and spirits to emerge. True to the vision of director Haruko Crow Nishimura and the vivid style of Degenerate Art Ensemble, the performance offers a hyper-visual and texturally rich experience. MORE INFO HERE

WORLD PREMIERE took place at the Moore Theatre presented by Seattle Theatre Group in February of 2026.

NEW YORK PREMIERE January 13-17 of 2027

UNDER THE RADAR FESTIVAL NYC

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Skeleton Flower

(current) Skeleton Flower is Degenerate Art Ensemble’s (DAE) performance of live music, visceral movement theater and dance, projected cinematic imagery and storytelling ritual. It is a semi-autobiographical exploration of Haruko Crow Nishimura’s (DAE’s director) struggle with identity, depression, childhood trauma, and the awakening of personal power. The piece deals with these issues with humor and imagination, casting her family as monsters from a Godzilla movie, and traces her personal struggle through three fairy tales which were read to her by her mother growing up. The work has been presented in Seattle, Mexico City, Odense, Denmark and Plovdiv, Bulgaria and San Francisco. CLICK HERE FOR MORE INFO

Boy mother / faceless bloom

(past) Boy mother / faceless bloom is a special collaboration between the directors of Degenerate Art Ensemble Haruko Crow Nishimura and Joshua Kohl with visual and sculptor Senga Nengudi and musician / dancer eddy kwon. The work premiered at the Colorado College and Fine Arts Center in 2022 followed by a run at the Cincinnati Contemporary Art Center. The work had its New York premiere at New York Live Arts.

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Predator Songstress

(2014-2015) Predator Songstress is an intensely visual, music-driven fantastical tale that traces the struggle of an anti-heroine in search of the reclamation of her stolen voice. This modern day fairy tale explores what it means to have a voice, to lose ones voice and to rediscover it with a new understanding of its power. The work is set in a world where the tools often used by the powerful to stifle and control are re-appropriated as means for individual realization. The work premiered at the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco. CLICK FOR MORE...

Uz Jsme Doma Collaboration

(2015)Degenerate Art Ensemble's Joshua Kohl collaborated with Czech rock legends Uz Jsme Doma to reimagine the band's 30 years of music as an orchestral suite. Kohl's orchestral arrangements explored the band's complex work and included the band as well as the voice of DAE's Crow Nishimura. The work was performed with the South Bohemian Philharmonic in Prague in December of 2016.
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Warrior with Kronos Quartet

(2013) As part of their 40th anniversary concert, Kronos Quartet group worked with Degenerate Art Ensemble performing DAE composer Joshua Kohl's composition Warrior along with the dance by DAE's Haruko Crow Nishimura.
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Underbelly

(2012) Degenerate Art Ensemble's Underbelly took place in spaces around the Seattle Space Needle never intended to be seen by the public. Underbelly was a 4 part site transforming journey bringing the public to various locations around the Seattle Center as part of celebration marking the 50th anniversary of the 1962 World's Fair for which the Space Needle and the numerous public spaces and cultural facilities were constructed. Historically, World's Fairs were designed to project a vision of the future. These "predictions" were seldom accurate. Underbelly was offered a chance to reconsider that trajectory.
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On The Beach (Robert Wilson/Watermill)

(2012)Degenerate Art Ensemble was commissioned by director Robert Wilson and the Watermill Center a Laboratory for Performance to create their own interpretation of Wilson and Phillip Glass' seminal work Einstein on the Beach. This was the first time ever that Wilson and Glass permitted new interpretations of this work. The production took place at the Baryshnikov Arts Center in New York, and celebrated the 35th anniversary of Einstein on the Beach.
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Red Shoes

(2011) Degenerate Art Ensemble's Red Shoes is a re-imagining of Hans Christian Andersen's tale of a girl who is cursed to dance herself to death for following her creative desires. Degenerate Art Ensemble's interpretation of this beloved fairy tale/ horror story is a rich drama of dreams, passion, discipline, desire, trauma, transformation, and reinvention. Degenerate Art Ensemble's work shows parallels between this story and the struggle to follow one's creative path in contemporary society. A Virtual Reality film based on this project is currently in the works in collaboration with Mechanical Dreams VR.
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Museum Exhibition

(2011) The first art exhibition and museum project showcasing Degenerate Art Ensemble was the culmination of a year-long dialogue between Frye Art Museum curator Robin Held and the artists of Degenerate Art Ensemble. The survey of the group's work filled the entire museum, featuring 14 artists and five large scale works inspired by the ambitious all-sensory productions the group is known for creating: a Weeble Wobble princess that battles ninjas, a surgery ice cream truck, a tuning nest in a listening forest, and the Slug Princess that devours cabbages in a microscopic world.
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Sonic Tales

(2009) Sonic Tales sets Degenerate Art Ensemble's surrealist dance theater style and hallucinatory visuals against fierce music that ranges from driving rocking rhythm to rich soaring melodies to far out atmospheric soundscapes — telling interwoven short stories in the form of bizarre invented fairy tales. Sonic Tales is both music concert and dance spectacle — video projection and breathtaking costumes enhance this totally one of a kind experience.
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Cuckoo Crow

(2005-7) "REDCAT (Roy & Edna Disney/CalArts Theater) is known for pushing the artistic envelope. DAE, however, may turn that push into a full-force kick. Degenerate Art Ensemble treats contemporary performance like a rubber band... always expanding, contracting, snapping, always helping us to listen and look at life with curious dynamics."
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