Our Mission

MICHIYAYA is a queer-led dance company that pushes boundaries and centers the divine feminine by creating space for multidisciplinary performances and programming.

About MICHIYAYA

Artistic Directors Anya and Mitsuko Clarke-Verdery founded MICHIYAYA Dance as a way to combine their voices as artists—Anya, a Black queer choreographer/dance artist from Brooklyn, and Mitsuko, a white & Japanese queer visual/performance artist from Manhattan. Together we create multidisciplinary works that often recount or reveal a contemporary engagement with queerness, resistant relationships to schemes of oppression and power, cultural constraints on the body and interpersonal relationships, and other revelatory themes.

MICHIYAYA is an evolving dance company based in New York City and Pittsburgh. Our performances have spread nationally at venues and institutions such as Yale University, Brooklyn Museum, Andy Warhol Museum, Gelsey Kirkland Theater, Gibney, La MaMa Galleria, among others. Our powerful group of femme voices has been featured in Art Forum, Vice i-D, Thinx, Mask Magazine, and more. Anya & Mitsuko’s vision has been supported by Microsoft, CVS Health, Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, Opportunity Fund, Greater Pittsburgh Arts Council, and Dance/NYC.

MICHIYAYA’s educational and community initiatives have reached the University California - Santa Barbara, Alonzo King LINES Ballet Training Program, Center for Anti-Violence Education, Dancing Grounds, GOOD MOVE, and more. Anya & Mitsuko have served as adjunct faculty for Purchase College Conservatory of Dance and Point Park University. They’ve been invited as artists in residence at the UC Santa Barbara, Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Art & Drama, PearlArts Studios, and more. The duo has been commissioned by Purchase College Conservatory of Dance, Earl Mosley's Diversity of Dance, UT Austin, among others.

Anya & Mitsuko’s newest venture is their multidisciplinary artist residency space in Pittsburgh, PA titled inter-. inter- is an extension of MICHIYAYA providing both creative and living space for local and visiting artists.