日本語

Seth Yarden

Personal Background, Education and Experience 
I was born on July 27, 1968 in Rhinebeck, New York. I have been based in Kyoto since 1996.

Fascinated by language, body movement and images since childhood, I studied both the French and Japanese languages while still in high school and also dedicated myself to the study of the martial art of Tae Kwon Do. I studied filmmaking, languages and literature at Hampshire College in Massachusetts, graduating in 1990. From 1990 to 1996 I lived in Portland, Oregon and was very active in the local arts scene, organizing and engaging in frequent performance art events, nightclub cabarets, happenings, dance performances and the like. Around the same time, I studied Chen-style T'ai Chi under Gregory Fong and modern dance under Toshiko Namioka.
I first came to Kyoto in the beginning of 1996. I was active in the local Kyoto dance and performance scene, both in the amateur traditional milieu through Traditional Theater Training (TTT), studying Kyogen under Akira Shigeyama, and in the butoh and contemporary dance scene, working with Lee/Dancing Commune, Hiromi Miyakita, Chisato Seino and Kiyoko Yamamoto and many others. In the summer of 1996, I performed twelve times in the middle of the Kamo River in central Kyoto. I stopped performing in 1999, after a performance tour around France.
In 2000-2001, I held two photography/installation exhibitions at Sugarmonger Gallery. Some of the images I have made will be available for viewing here in the near future.
I started working as a free-lance Japanese-to-English translator in 1998. Recently, I have been working on a variety of projects concerned with arts and culture communications and promotion. I look forward to continued development in this area while taking on new challenges in other fields as well. Please refer to the Publications page for a list of recent clients and projects.
Seth Yarden January 2005