Blood Cherries is a solo theater piece woven from text, Butoh dance, music and intense visual imagery, written and performed by Dawn Akemi Saito. In Blood Cherries a young woman goes on a fantastical journey into memory and the imagination in an attempt to come to terms with the dying and death of her father. Saito transforms herself throughout—into her charismatic father, her long suffering mother, her French husband, even a wild horse fracturing in frustration and despair—all in an effort to understand her father's spirit and find her place in a world without him. In one of the most dramatic and haunting throughlines of the piece she embodies her Japanese grandmother during the bombing of her village during World War II.