I met Sachi when I presented SoundSeen at U.C. Santa Cruz in my senior year there, 1986-87. Because I gave the group their check the night of the performance (and it didn't bounce), they hired me as a grantswriter for the summer. I stayed with Sachi at Artaud while working on the grants on the days I came up from Santa Cruz. At the end of the summer I moved to New York for law school, and just got back to the Bay Area this Fall. Little did I know then that that memorable summer experience was the beginning of a wonderful life-long friendship.

Over the years I came back to the Bay Area regularly. I always had a warm welcome and a place to stay with Sachi and Dale in their home. One year, I learned they would tell Project Artaud people that their "son" was coming to visit whenever I came by. I was surprised, but felt honored to be thus "adopted." In coming back here to live this Fall, I was happy about the prospect of being able to spend more time with Sachi and Dale.

She was an inspiration to me, as she was and remains to many. Mostly about how to be in the world, how to treat people right. Her presence, her warmth, her strength, her deep compassion, and her clear vision in matters of both politics and the heart are what I will always remember. And her love of Teddy. I knew too little of her creative life, but have learned more. I feel blessed to have known her.

I miss her. I still feel her presence.

John Hayakawa Torok

The soul shall dance.

I heard about Sachi. You know that she is very, very special to me. Plucked me out of high school green and tenderfooted she did. She treated me like a real dancer. Like an artist. She took me seriously. She introduced me to the community.

Perhaps you could read something from me at the memorial. If it is appropriate. For now, Sachi's passing reminds me of how very long it's been since I danced. When I was young I danced all the time. My first art. As I aged I wanted to be more reserved in public. My wife and I are partying at a club in Vegas. But we do not dance. So yesterday I cranked up some old tunes. I can't do what Beyonce do. But I can still dance. Still. I suggest we all action this meditation that is the dance. When you get the choice to sit it out or dance. I hope you dance.
 
Kelvin Han Yee  

It is early on a Wed morning and I am up trying to sort out a dance that I am performing on Thursday. My thoughts turn to Sach. I remember when we (she, me and Nancy Wong) danced modern with this Italian American dance teacher who was always putting us down and saying our bodies didn't move right etc. (the implication being that we didn't have "dancer's bodies). If it weren't for Sachi's great sense of humor and our youth and undying hope that one day we would be "dancers" we would have thrown in the towel. But we just looked at each other and knew...some day.

When I came back from sambaing in Rio and wanted to tell everybody about it, Sachi hired me to work with the Asian American Dance Collective. Yes! In a short time she had managed to get funding to put her own ideas and that of other Asians out front. So the first group I ever taught to samba in SF was a small group of wonderfully enthusiastic students from the collective. That was when Sachi was busy out-Warholing Andy with her food fantasies. What she was doing was great. And funny!

Sachi has a way of finding a place for everybody which is a mark of a good choreographer. Many, many dances later, I saw Sachi do a lovely rendition of her "paper dance" with Kim accompanying on percussion. I know he learned a lot from her. The music sounded great and Sachi was in her element creating metaphors for us to figure out.

This was at the Lizard Loft in Hawaii. When it was over for a brief moment it looked like a storm had hit. There was paper everywhere! Sachi was able to delve into her vision and come up with a veritable storm of ideas and then image by image trace them into a dance. Her subtlety, which our teacher could not appreciate, is indeed one of her most endearing qualities and an essential part of her beauty. I also learned a lot from Sach. She helped me see that it was not just "ok" but "great" to be different.

Born as Yvonne Endo and known as "Sachi" to her friends, Ms. Nakamura co-founded the Asian American Dance Collective in 1974 and performed with numerous other individuals and groups, such as Theatre of Yugen and the Asian American Theater Company.

"She was like a bright light," said Brenda Wong Aoki, a performance artist and storyteller who moved from Los Angeles to San Francisco to study with Ms. Nakamura three decades years ago, a time when Asian American choreographers in California could be counted on two fingers.

"She was really unusual in that her work was funny," Aoki said. "At that time, everybody's work was so right-on and didactic. She was exploiting stereotypes that were so over the top, they made you laugh."

Ms. Nakamura had a strong commitment to political causes that can be traced to her birth in a working-class family in West Oakland, her incarceration as a child in a World War II internment camp for Japanese Americans and her growing up in the neighborhood that nurtured the Black Panthers. Her father was an immigrant from Japan who repaired shoes and did landscape gardening.

"She was an amazing character," said Yuriko Doi, founder of Theatre of Yugen in San Francisco. "Her personality attracted many people. What was wonderful is she started encouraging young Asian Americans to enjoy dance."

Geri: "I think this was taken during one of the Open Studios at Project Artaud but I cannot recall the year. It certainly was a great day to celebrate :o)

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