Join us for a Holiday concert experience, unique to the year of 2020!
Don’t miss our video premiere on YouTube and Facebook on Saturday December 19th at 7pm CST!
If you have to miss the premiere, the video will stay available for viewing till the end of the year, so you can watch anytime until then!
The program includes the Nutcracker and other Piano solo works by Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, performed by Rie Tanaka. The music will be transformed into a motion story by Yuki Tokuda’s original choreography and dance.
In place of purchasing a ticket to our concert, please consider donating to our fundraising page. All the proceeds will go to Compassion International to help children in extreme poverty.
The year 2020 wasn’t pretty, and the holiday season will certainly look different than usual. Performing artists are hard hit by COVID-19, and many of us have dealt with the grief of isolation as well artistic frustration and doubt. Through our performance, we hope to portray our search for hope, and inspire the spirit of giving this holiday season.
Purchase tickets / make a donation here.
Please RSVP on our Facebook event page.
MIRAGE Performing Artsis a Twin-Cities based group of multidisciplinary performing artists who envision to enrich and enhance both cultures around Classical Music and Ballet. The group was co-founded by Rie Tanaka, Pianist and Yuki Tokuda, choreographer / Ballet dancer after their first collaborative production, “MIRAGE.” Their premier performance sold out tickets to all three shows, and received raving reviews from the audience, being featured on Star Tribune as one of “The Week’s Best Classical Concerts.”
Artist Bio
Yuki Tokuda, originally from Japan, and was trained under Mikiko Dei, Hideo Fukagawa and Jun Ishii, internationally recognized dancers, teachers and competition judges. She moved to the US in 2000 to continue her training in New York at the Joffrey Ballet School.
Ms. Tokuda has danced professionally with USA Ballet, Peoria Ballet, Metropolitan Ballet and she was the principal dancer at Continental Ballet for 7 years. With diverse training in classical, contemporary, modern and jazz, she is an international guest dancer and collaborator with many companies, including Minnesota’s James Sewell Ballet and Minnesota Dance Theatre. While training in New York, Ms. Tokuda’s instructors included David Howard, John Prinz, Fabrice Herrault, and Michael Vernon. At Steps on Broadway in New York she was one of the first International Visa Program students. She has, also, trained with Boston Ballet and Connecticut Ballet.
She has performed many principal roles, most notably in: Le Corsaire, Don Quixote Pas de Deux, Les Sylphides, Pas de Quatre, Agnes de Mille’s Rodeo, the Peasant Pas de Deux in Giselle, Princess Aurora, Lilac Fairy and Princess Florine in Sleeping Beauty, the Sugar Plum Fairy and Clara in The Nutcracker, Odette and Odile in Swan Lake, Coppelia, and the title roles in Romeo and Juliet, Giselle and A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
Ms. Tokuda is a faculty member at Minnesota Dance Theatre and a certified STOTT Pilates Instructor. She has taught many master classes in Japan and the US including at Cathedral Dance Festival and Interlochen Center for the Arts. Her choreography was chosen for Choreographer’s Evening at The Walker Arts Center and commissioned by Wayzata Symphony Orchestra, Woodale Church, Cerulean Fire and Japan America Society of Minnesota. She is a recipient of Minnesota State Arts Board. She is the owner/designer of Yukitard, a custom dancewear company, as well as, the owner/instructor of Tokuda Ballet, a private ballet school.
Dr. Rie Tanaka is a Pianist, music educator, and wellness specialist. Native of Osaka, Japan, she is a prize winner of international and national competitions in Japan and the U.S., winning top prizes in MTNA Young Artist Competition, Schubert Club Competition, Chautauqua International Piano Competition, Rosenstock International Piano Competition, to name a few.
Rie maintains a full concert schedule for solo and chamber performances. She has appeared in venues such as NHK Osaka hall, Phoenix hall in Osaka Japan, the Ordway Center for the Performing Arts, Landmark Center in St. Paul, Thrasher Opera House in Wisconsin, among others. She is on the roster of performance artists of the Thursday Musical Concert Series, Schubert Club Courtroom Concert Series, Hastings Arts Center Coffee Concert Series, South Beach Chamber Ensemble, and the Saint Paul Conservatory of Music Coffee Concert Series.
As a chamber musician, she often collaborates with her husband and cellist Jesse Nummelin as Duo Ihana. Their performance has been featured on American Public Radio’s “Your Classical”, Leif Eriksson International Festival, Des Moines Symphony Orchestra’s DMSO at Home, and many local and regional concert series. She also collaborated with ballet dancer and choreographer Yuki Tokuda, co-directing and performing sold-out concerts “MIRAGE,” which was named as one of “week’s best Classical concerts” by StarTribune. She is frequently a guest artist for Miami based chamber group South Beach Chamber Ensemble, and has been featured on Wisconsin Public Radio for their annual “Up North” concert tour.
Rie received her B.M. from the University of Wisconsin Stevens Point, studying under Dr. Raffi Besalyan, M.M. and D.M.A. from the University of Minnesota – Twin Cities, where she studied with Alexander Braginsky, and served as a Piano Teaching Assistant for five years. She currently teaches Piano at the Saint Paul Conservatory of Music and Mount Olivet School of Music. She lives in Mound, MN with her husband Jesse Nummelin and Bengal-mix cat Munchie.
Pianist Rie Tanaka 