Kentaro Shiozawa

Ken Shiozawa (they/them) was born in Japan and raised in Irvine, California. They began their training at age seven at the Maple Conservatory of Dance, under the artistic direction of Charles Maple. They spent their senior year of high school attending Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s Full-Time Program and have attended various summer programs including the National Choreographer’s Initiative, Washington Ballet, Milwaukee Ballet, and Oklahoma City Ballet. In the summer of 2018, they toured and performed works in various cities throughout Eastern Europe with Butler Ballet. In May of 2020, they graduated with a BFA in Dance Performance from Butler University and now attend the University of Wisconsin Superior as a graduate student in Clinical Mental Health.

Ken also choreographs, with their most recent work being set on Minnesota Ballet. In 2019, they attended Regional Dance America’s National Choreography Intensive as a Project Tier Choreographer. Ken also teaches ballet, jazz and modern for the School of Minnesota Ballet.

Among their many performances, Ken’s featured roles include Puck in Bruce Wells’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, the Snow King in Karl von Rabenau’s Nutcracker: A Duluth Tale, Prince Ivan in Flavia Garcia’s Firebird, the Wizard in Darren’s McIntyre’s Wizard of Oz, and a soloist in Durante Verzola’s Spirited Syncopations.