Mary Sano, artistic director of the Mary Sano Studio of Duncan Dancing, is a protégée of Mignon Garland, who founded the Isadora Duncan Heritage Society (IDHS) in San Francisco. A native of Japan, Sano began to study Duncan dance with Garland in San Francisco in 1979, and established the Japanese branch of the IDHS in 1983. She remains active in Japan, performing and offering workshops a few times a year. She published a Japanese edition of Isadora by Fredrika Blair in 1990 from Parco Publishing in Tokyo, Japan. In the San Francisco Bay Area, Sano received an MA in Dance from Mills College in 1991 and began to train a group of dancers in the Duncan style, and formed Mary Sano and her Duncan Dancers in 1993. In 1997, Sano opened her dance studio in SOMA district in San Francisco near Isadora Duncan's birthplace (corner of Taylor and Geary Street).

Sano directs a company whose repertoire includes all of Duncan’s masterpieces set to the works of Chopin, Schubert, Brahms, Gluck, and Scriabin. She also creates new choreography developed out of her deep knowledge of the Duncan style and dance philosophy, combined with traditional Japanese dance, modern technique, and other theatrical styles. Notable recent works are Past, Present, Future: Wishing Moon, performed in honor of the 50th Anniversary of the U.S.-Japan Peace Treaty signing in San Francisco, in 2001; and Duncan Dance: Zen and Now, a fusion of Asian influences and Duncan technique which she premiered in Budapest 2002; and Ave Maria, Uzume, Dew, Roses, Chinese Long Silk dances from the Solo Series in Tokyo in 2003 and 2005. Critics have described her work as “magical,” “exquisite,” “never arbitrary,” and of a “vibrant tradition.”

Since 2003, Sano as been creating dance-dramas in collaboration with a text-writer, live musicians, narrators, actors and video projection, and premiered Dancing/Dreaming Izamani and Amaterasu in 2003 in both the U.S. and Japan. In 2004, she was invited to perform her second dance-drama in collaboration with noted writer/professor Moira Roth at the Gakugeki Festival in Kyoto, Japan and presented Amaterasu, The Blind Woman and Hiroshima. During the year of 2006, she worked with Japanese traditional Noh Theater artists in the Noh Seminar Series presented at the Mary Sano Studio, and performed experimental theater pieces combining Duncan Dance technique and Noh Theater works.

Sano has been presenting annual dance/music festivals at her studio, The Dionysian Festival: a celebration of Isadora Duncan’s birthday and Terpsichorean Celebration. The Studio celebrated its 10th annual Dionysian Festival in May, and its 11th annual Terpsichorean Celebration in November in 2007.

She teaches and performs internationally, and has been invited to Greece, Hungary, Czech Republic, France, and Japan. She has been creating a new series of works with original poems, photo images, and with video footage in which Sano depicts the Japanese sun goddess Amaterasu. The recent works include Morning Glory, Blossoms, Adagio, The Old Town of Hundred Towers, Bird, Yamato-asobi, Wind Song, and Full Moon Night. Since the opening of new space RV Lab in Tokyo in 2006, she has presented a series of salon concerts; performing her original works as well as traditional Duncan choreography in both a solo and with a group of dancers she has been training in Tokyo.