Marina Fukushima, born in Tokyo, Japan, is a dancer and choreographer based in San Francisco. From a cross-cultural perspective, her creative focus is on the themes of silence, family, and intergenerational relationships. Since 2016, she has been developing a Family Project series in primary collaboration with her parents (both visual artists), including the multimedia dance projects Memento Forest — katami (2026), Relative Audience (2023), Zoom Dinner (2020), and Family Seasons (2016). Since 2014, in collaboration with Isak Immanuel, the role of constructing somatic-based workshops inclusive to elderly and non-dancers has become a key focus for cultivating a communal process, creative research, and numerous intergenerational site-specific dance performances. In 2017, she created the multi-disciplinary solo dance "Sky of 11.5 Hours" in response to the video installation exhibition of Dionne Lee (US) and Shirin Abedinirad (Iran) as a part of Aggregate Space Gallery AIR, in Oakland, CA. In the previous year, she presented the multimedia dance performance "Family Seasons" at NOHspace in collaboration with her parents (both visual artists), preceded by the thematically connected works "At Rest" and "Place for Family in Dance" (as a resident artist at Deborah Slater’s Studio 210 in San Francisco). Prior, in collaboration with visual designer Olivia Ting, she created the works "Wrinkle in the Horizon" and "Room in a Pinhole" and was a resident artist at Treasure Hill Artist Village in Taipei. Ongoing, through movement, her works create a dialogue between the fragile relationships of generations, cultures, and contrasting environments.
Her works have been supported by San Francisco Art Commission, Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission, NOHSpace, U.S./Japan Cultural Trade Network, Theatre Bay Area CA$H, Zellerbach Family Foundation, Little Tokyo Service Centerʼs +LAB AIR, and others.
She received her BFA in Dance from Butler University and MFA in Dance from the University of Iowa. Since 2005, she has performed with numerous dance companies and choreographers in the San Francisco Bay Area, including Epiphany Productions, KUNST-STOFF, Lenora Lee Dance, Mark Foehringer Dance Project, ODC, Catharine Galasso, Christine Bonansea, project agora, and Tableau Stations and toured across the United States and internationally in Germany, Greece, Peru, Taiwan, Korea, and Japan.
In collaboration with Isak Immanuel / Tableau Stations, she worked on several uniquely composed intergenerational dance performances. Focused on local/global questions of place, family, community, and instability, projects have been researched and presented at Headlands Center for the Arts, NOHspace, CounterPulse, Kinosaki International Art Center, Seoul Dance Center, and TPAM (Tokyo/Yokohama Performing Arts Meeting). In 2018, they collaborated with locals to develop "THINGS EVAPORATE - dances of sickness and health" as artist-in-residents in Beppu, Japan. In 2019, addressing the theme “ending cycles of displacement” as part of Little Tokyo + LAB AIR in partnership with the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center in Los Angeles, they conducted several somatic and creative workshops and developed the intergenerational performance “FESTIVAL OF SHADOWS - mapping invisible dances”. In early 2020, while in residence at Rogers Art Loft in Las Vegas, they created the collaborative project "DRY EYES - place after image" shaped from the theme of unstable landscapes and images, the nature of perception, home, and possibility. For 2026-2027, they are developing an intergenerational collaboration with the theme of ‘Landscapes of Youth / Kodomo Fudoki”, supported in part by the San Francisco Arts Commission and a Creative Artists’ Fellowship from the Japan-U.S. Friendship Commission
