Koichi Kubo

First Japanese ballet dancer to make the cover of Dance Magazine in 1998. Born in Tokyo, he trained at the Tomotake Nakamura Ballet Research Institute in Shinjuku. At the age of 16, he was awarded 1st place at the Moscow International Ballet Competition. Before working as a principal dancer with the Colorado Ballet, he was a principal with the Asami Maki Ballet in Tokyo and a guest principal with the Boston Ballet. In 2006, he left Denver for San Francisco to join the Smuin Ballet, a company founded in 1994 by Michael Smuin. As a leading dancer he performed around the world in the most renowned theaters. He returned to live in Japan, where he's artistic director of the NBA Ballet Company since 2012. In 2014, he was awarded by the Agency for Cultural Affairs in the presence of the emperor of Japan Akihito.