Yasuko Nagamine was born in Aizu-Wakamatsu City of Fukushima Prefecture. She started to learn modern dancing at the age of three.
At the age of 19, she became a student of late Suzuko Kawakami to study Spanish dancing.

In 1960, she left Aoyama-gakuin University and went to Spain to study all by herself. After assiduous training, she performed in the prestigious "Tablao Coral de la Moreria" Flamenco Restaurant, as the first Japanese dancer and received great admiration.

In 1975, she performed a dance based on a well-known long poem "Llanto por Ignacio Sanchez Mejias" by "Federico Garcia Lorca<Spain's most deeply appreciated and revered poet>" at the NHK Hall.
She acted out the life and death of a bullfighter with utmost passion and won a Japan Arts Festival Award for Excellence and an award of the Japan Dance Critics Association of that year.

In 1977, she challenged Salome and succeeded in expressing diabolic eroticism of a woman to win a Golden Arrow Award. After that, her creative power knew no limits, turning to other types of music such as rock, Afro and Samba,crossing national and racial boundaries, avidly absorbing the blood and rhythm of different cultures-to the creation of her own unique world.

In 1980, she finally came back to Japan. She challenged a famous Japanese legend Musume Dojoji.
This stage was hugely acclaimed as "a work that has given a new life to the obsolete traditional Japanese dance" and won the Grand Prix of the Japan Arts Festival of that year.

In 1982, Musume Dojoji was performed at the Lincoln Center in New York and impressed the packed audience of over 3,000 greatly, establishing Nagamine as a full-fledged international dancer "to connect the East and the West".

In 1983, she performed Mandala with the help of 50 Buddhist monks whose roaring chant beautifully personated the original sin of the human beings and their final salvation.

In 1984, Nagamine brought Mandala to New York and performed in front of the N.Y audience again and created a great sensation.

In 1985, Nagamine danced Sagimusume ( Stork Daughter ), in 1986, Onibaba ( Devil Hag ), in 1987, Adachi-ga-Hara and Ukiyoburo. They were all based on Japanese legends but treated with original ideas and concepts and drew much public attention.

Since 1988, Yasuko Nagamine has performed Japanese classical works at the National Theater and western works at the Nakano Sun Plaza Theater, every year respectively.

1982 Musume Dojoji at the Lincoln Center.

1984 Mandala at the Carnegie Hall.

1993 Sotoba Komachi ( by Yukio Mishima ) at the Equitable Theater, Broadway.

Purple Ribbon Medal for Arts (2001)