It was during the 2007 premiere tour of “Le Corsaire” in Sapporo, Hokkaido, that K-Ballet Tokyo faced a crisis. The company’s founder and artistic director Tetsuya Kumakawa sustained a knee injury on stage during a performance and was forced to withdraw from dancing.

Shiori Asakawa, then a young soloist, was on stage, too.

“Until then, I had never seen him injured or in pain — not even once,” says Asakawa, who is now a principal dancer and assistant artistic director at the company. “To me, he was invincible. So when he suddenly got injured in front of me, I was shocked. It was the first time I realized that he was human.”