About Us

Creative Minds Collaborative (CMC) is a non-profit organization, established by Nao Kusuzaki (former Soloist dancer with Houston Ballet) in 2016, in order to cultivate cultural understanding between Houston’s diverse communities and their artists. As Nao grew up in both the U.S. and Japan, her values of deepening the U.S.-Japan friendship and understanding through dance arts is a big pillar of CMC. We achieve this through the creation and presentation of collaborative and educational performing art projects for the community.

CMC serves the community with meaningful interactions for the public through the creation of dance programming that bridges the educational, cultural, and artistic sectors. The organization has a history of partnering with community leaders from Houston to Japan. Artistic Director Nao Kusuzaki curates each season around one large dance work that focuses on a cultural theme, such as folktales, visual arts, or traditional music, and from there builds a series of site-specific performing arts events.

Thanks to this creative mobile model, CMC connects previously unfamiliar communities with each other, often across great distances. CMC values artists and their work. The organization aims to nurture current professional dancers and musicians by providing them a platform to collaborate, and cultivates future generations of dancers by providing student educational workshops and performance opportunities, helping lend a festival feel to the culminating dance event for each season.