San Jose Taiko’s highly-acclaimed Swingposium employs the power of performance to teach about the incarceration of Japanese Americans during World War II.

Swingposium is an immersive production that combines taiko, jazz, swing dance, and theatre to tell a
hidden history of one way Japanese Americans maintained morale in World War II “internment camps” –
through swing dances with live big band music. The audience is surrounded with the sights and sounds
in a fictional mess hall serving as a dance hall behind barbed wire. Active participation pulls them
deeply into the emotional trajectory of the story: the fear and loss of being incarcerated without due
process, the struggle to maintain dignity and hope, and the perseverance of the human spirit.