SAKURA ENSEMBLE was created in Kailua Kona Hawaii toward the end of 2009 as a dancer of Bolshoi training and world wide experience , and her contemporary artist husband came together with a keyboard artist and flutist who shared the similar vision of spiritual uplift and transformation through the arts. We believe that it is with the wordless medium of sound and grace that humans can be uplifted to heaven.

Annu Shionoya (piano, organ & keyboards) and Jean Pierre Thoma ( flutes and winds) have developed a style of performance to support the dance that brings out the motion of the dance and raises it to the level of prayer. Shizuno Nasu has not only benefitted from her European training and experience, but has also scoured every province in her native Japan for the history of movement into spirituality.