For Ballet Dancer Amane Takaishi, It's All About Making Connections

When Amane Takaishi saw her first ballet show as a toddler, her mother had to chase her around the seats to stop her from distracting others in the audience. But Takaishi kept on moving.

“My mom thought I was going crazy,” she jokes, during a recent sit-down interview with Sampan.

Another mom at the show, however, realized that Takaishi wasn’t trying to be unruly.

“She noticed I was trying to dance,” says Takaishi, sitting at a park bench near her home in Cambridge. “I was only like three or four, so I wasn’t exactly right with my body movements.”

Takaishi was mimicking the dancers on stage. Even at that young age, she says now, she already wanted to dance.

Soon after, her mother enrolled her in ballet classes, and Takaishi fell in love with the art. She kept practicing, and by age 10, she said, she had written a note to herself during an assignment telling what she wanted to become as an adult (age 10 is considered the halfway mark to Japan’s coming of age at 20). She wanted to become a ballerina.

Amane Takaishi in Cambridge recently. Photo by Adam Smith

This passion for dance led her to study in England at the Elmhurst Ballet School, which is in association with Birmingham Royal Ballet, and the Central School of Ballet as a teen, after her father had moved to England for work. Later, she would travel to the U.S. and perform in Arizona and Chicago, and finally settle in Boston, where she now works with the City Ballet of Boston and teaches about the art of dance at Boston University and Boston College.

A couple of years ago, Takaishi says, she was called up by an old colleague, Beth Mochizuki, whom she had met through local dance icon Tony Williams. Mochizuki was forming the Asian American Ballet Project. Mochizuki, who is now the artistic director of the group, wanted Takaishi, who had performed in the Urban Nutcracker, to join.

“I was like, ‘Yes, of course!” says Takaishi. But she also didn’t know if she’d be a good fit.

“I honestly didn’t know there was not already a company that was Asian American,” she says, but at the same time, she hadn’t really viewed herself as Asian American. “I see myself as a Japanese person living in the U.S.,” she says.

The Boston-based Asian American Ballet Project was founded in 2022, and bills itself as the first Asian American ballet company that allows its dancers to “work alongside artists of the same racial background.” The group recently performed its show, “Once Upon Our Time.”

As time went on, however, Takaishi said, she grew to appreciate the group’s mission in a way she hadn’t before.

“I really started to see the value of the company,” and it led her to think more about how she connects with people and the meaning of being an Asian American.

“People don’t define the term and then talk about it,” she says. She says she thinks of the term Asian American as less about race and more about how people view themselves.

“At the end of the day,” she says. “I know who I am and I just want to dance.”

The Asian American Ballet Project, she says, has helped her learn about and contribute to dance performances of different countries and cultures.

“The beautiful thing about dance is it’s a two-way street,” she says. Takaishi, now in her early 30s, says that she’s also been reflecting on her career in dance and how when she was younger, her goal was always to improve and get ahead, but now it’s more about her relationships with her audience and her students.

“It used to be all about me,” she says. “But now it’s a tool to connect with people, to inspire people. … I get inspired when the audience is getting inspired.”