Mitsuko Toguchi Sensei, Dance Director Dance Director Mitsuko Toguchi is the Head of the Hawaii Chapter of the Ryusei School, the Toguchi Mitsuko Ryubu Kenkyusho and has students (numbering over 100) throughout Oahu, Maui, and in the San Francisco Bay Area. She has devoted her life to the preservation and introduction of Okinawan performing arts to various communities in the United States. She has performed in Okinawa, Japan, Hawaii, and in many mainland U.S. cities (including San Francisco, Seattle, Portland, Los Angeles and San Jose). In 1997, she and her students toured Hokkaido and gave performances to acquaint the people of that prefecture with the dances and music of Okinawa. For the past five years, she has been Dance Coordinator for the Kariyushi Kai, a San Francisco Bay Area-based Okinawan performing arts organization. She has also been the recipient of grants from the State of Hawaii to instruct senior citizens interested in learning Okinawan dance and culture. In addition, she has participated in the Hawaii Folk Arts Program's Master-Apprentice Program. Through this grant, she instructed Satomi Kurazumi and took her to Okinawa last year where she passed the Newcomer Level of the Okinawan Dance Competition sponsored by the Ryukyu Shimpo newspaper.