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Born in Hyogo, Japan, Yumi is trained in classical ballet and modern dance and has a degree in Physical Education from Kobe University (1988). Yumi is the only Japanese Butoh Dancer in Australia and the creator of original Butoh Cabaret works. Originally a member of the seminal Butoh Company DaiRakudakan in Tokyo, she came to Australia to perform at the Melbourne International Festival in 1991. She has appeared in numerous dance, theatre and film productions in Australia, Japan, Europe, and south-east Asia. She is also an independent performance artist, and has performed at many major national and international festivals including Adelaide Festival, Perth Festival, Melbourne International Festival, Canberra National Multicultural Festival, Hong Kong City fringe Festival, Trace-Post Butoh Festival(Copenhagen), Image of Asia Festival(Copenhagen), JADE2002(Tokyo), Festivale dell Colline torinese, Portevenere Festivale(Italy), and Japanese Theatre season(Paris).
Yumi's unique Butoh Cabaret series, DasSHOKU Productions, features Yumi in Tokyo DasSHOKU Girl (winner of Green Room and Fringe Awards), a provocative Butoh Cabaret performed at the Melbourne Fringe in 1999 and toured around Australia. The adapted version, DasSHOKU Cultivations!! had a sell-out season in Osaka in 2003 and new work DasSHOKU Hora!! was premiered in Melbourne in November 2005. Her other major dance theatre productions are Fleeting Moments (two Green Room Awards, 1998), How could you even begin to understand? (collaboration with Tony Yap, Green Room Award 2001) , in-compatibility (Melbourne International Festival 2003), INORI-in-visible (Toured Takarazuka City, Japan, Melbourne and Copenhagen).She has also worked in the theatre/ dance productions in Australia with Playbox, Handspan visual theatre, N.Y.I.D, Theatre Kantanka, Marrugeku and Chunky Move. Yumi has worked with Moira Finucane and Jackie Smith in Short Shape Shift (2003), Saucy Cantina (Hong Kong City Fringe 2004), The Banquet Room (BB05, Dancehouse 2005) and in the constantly sell out seasons of The Burlesque Hour (2004, 2005-Sydney Opera House, Adelaide, Edinburgh Fringe festival and The Famous Spiegel Tent Return season 2005)
"Umiumare's psychological presentation of caricature is salted with just the right degree of humor and tragedy." In Press Magazine, 1995
"Umiumare's inventiveness and physical discipline were evidenced in the way she could almost redesign her physique to embody her different characters." The Age 1999
"Yumi Umiumare's background visibly remains butoh and its multifarious manifestations of a body at once chaotic, fluid, sensitive and radically restrained." In press Magazine 2001
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