Rika Ohara

Rika Ohara was a manga artist before she studied painting and photography; her MFA thesis production at California Institute of the Arts was a dance-theater adaptation of Oscar Wilde's Salomé featuring dancer/choreographer Tracy Rhoades as a gender-defying Herodias. She has produced and toured with many interdisciplinary theatre pieces with her company Nuclear Family, and has written book, film and art reviews for local and national publications, and as a staff writer for the L.A. Weekly (1992-7). At the turn of the millennium, Ohara exhibited videodance installations at Monaco Dance Forum, Rencontres Internationales Paris-Berlin, NewMoves Festival, Glasgow, and The Plaza Gallery, Tokyo, and began showing short films at international film festivals. Her first feature film The Heart of No Place won the Best Film award at London Independent Film Festival (2010).