Joan Laage/Kogut Butoh
with Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute
APRIL 6-8, 2023
Runtime: 110 minutes with intermission
Please note this performance contains haze.
Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute
The Slowest Wave
Choreographed and Directed by Vangeline
Performed by Azumi Oe, Margherita Tisato, and Vangeline
Lighting by Ayumu "Poe" Saegusa
Publicity by Michelle Tabnick
In collaboration with neuroscientists Sadye Paez and Constantina Theofanopoulou, neuro engineer Jose ‘Pepe’ Contreras-Vidal, and composer Ray Sweeten, Vangeline choreographed a 60-minute ensemble butoh piece, which is uniquely informed by the protocol established for a scientific pilot study researching the impact of butoh on brain activity. This is an excerpt from the Slowest Wave.
Vangeline is a teacher, dancer, and choreographer specializing in Japanese butoh. She is the artistic director of the Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute (New York), a dance company firmly rooted in the tradition of Japanese butoh while carrying it into the twenty-first century. With her all-female dance company, Vangeline’s socially conscious performances tie together butoh and activism. Vangeline is the founder of the New York Butoh Institute Festival, which elevates the visibility of women in butoh, and the Queer Butoh festival. She pioneered the award-winning, 15-year running program The Dream a Dream Project, which brings butoh dance to incarcerated men and women at correctional facilities across New York State.
She is the winner of a 20222/23 Gibney Dance DIP artist Residency; a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Dance Award; is a 2018 NYFA/NYSCA Artist Fellow in Choreography for Elsewhere, and the winner of the 2015 Gibney Dance Social Action Award, as well as the 2019 Janet Arnold Award from the Society of Antiquaries of London.
She pioneered the first neuroscientific study of Butoh “The Slowest Wave;” Her work is the subject of CNN’s “Great Big Story” "Learning to Dance with your Demons.” She is also featured on BBC’s podcast Deeply Human with host Dessa (episode 2 of 12: Why We Dance).
www.vangeline.com
Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute aims to preserve the legacy and integrity of Japanese Butoh while carrying the art form into the future. The unique art of Butoh originated in post-World War II Japan as a reaction to the loss of identity caused by the westernization of Japanese culture, as well as a realization that ancient Japanese performing traditions no longer spoke to a contemporary audience. The Vangeline Theater is home to the New York Butoh Institute, dedicated to the advancement of Butoh in the 21st century.
The raw value of live performance is what fuels Butoh dancer Azumi O E. Mesmerizing, shocking and playful movement is choreographed with meticulous timing, conspiring a visual relationship between the inner and outer human dimensions. Azumi wields her physical form as an expression and exploration of full individuality routed by the notion of collective oneness. Following eight years with New York-based company Vangeline Theatre and as Assistant Choreographer/Principal Dancer for Butoh Master Katsura Kan, Azumi O E makes a continuous effort to exceed artistic constructs. She regularly develops experimental projects through solo pieces and collaborations with artists of various mediums. Notable co-operative works span video art and live performance with contemporary visual artist MARCK; composer Takuya Nakamura, “Impulsive Instrument” with Bassist Sean Ali, and upcoming duo with bassist Tim Dahl. www.azumioe.com
Margherita Tisato is a dancer, teacher to teachers, movement enthusiast, and a passionate changemaker. She has been dancing and teaching since she was 17 and leading yoga and meditation classes, workshops and teacher trainings for over a decade. In New York since 2006, she is a principal dancer with Sokolow Theater/Dance Ensemble, Dances We Dance, and works with Dances by Isadora et al. Margherita started studying Butoh with Vangeline in 2007, becoming a principal dancer with the Vangeline Theater in 2008 until 2017, and has been training regularly with other prominent Butoh Masters, making Butoh an integral part of her artistic and spiritual practice. She teaches butoh workshops internationally. Margherita is known for creating Trauma-informed spaces for transformation. She facilitates a range of experiences spanning from meditation, yoga and somatic movement to dance, Butoh, and body suspension. Other educational offerings include experiential workshops in anatomy, pain science, embodiment, and trauma theory. Notably she has been a guest speaker at the University of Nebraska, and the Transart Institute Creative Research PhD program with the Liverpool John Moores University. She co-taught Sokolow repertory and technique classes at Loyola University in Chicago, Williams College in Massachusetts and Ailey-Fordham in New York. She has taught in prisons and addiction recovery programs in NYC since 2015, and she’s currently working on a research grant on Embodiment and Addiction through the University of Nebraska Rural Drug Addiction Research Center.
Ray Sweeten aka Barragan-Sweeten (b. 1975) is a visual artist & sound maker based in New York and Rhode Island. He has performed and screened works at Moma/PS1, San Francisco Electronic Music Festival, New York Film Festival, Anthology Film Archive, Issue Project Room, Participant Gallery, Microscope Gallery, The Kitchen, Roulette, and toured throughout Europe as a member of Fabrica Musica. He has released music as f13 on Beige Records, and as The Mitgang Audio on Suction Records. In 2010 he co-founded DataSpaceTime with visual artist Lisa Gwilliam and has exhibited, performed and screened works at Centre Pompidou, Parish Museum, City Center NY, Microscope Gallery, AS220, Next Festival at BAM, Florida Atlantic University, Cica Museum. He has taught at Guggenheim Museum and was guest artist faculty at Sarah Lawrence with L. Gwilliam. DataSpaceTime is represented by Microscope Gallery in NYC.
Ayumu Poe Saegusa (Lighting Designer) started stage lighting design in 2000 in Tokyo. He moved to NYC in 2005 and became the resident lighting designer at HERE Arts Center. He also works as a Freelance lighting designer for various shows, from the NY Fringe Festival to Lincoln Center Festival in various countries from Japan to Europe. He loves collaborating on multimedia opera shows and all sorts of puppet shows. His credit for opera includes “Looking At You” (directed by Kristin Martin at HERE in 2019) and “Book of the mountains and Seas” (By Basil Twist in Copenhagen in 2021, at St Ann’s Warehouse in 2022). He founded Creative Machine Stage Lighting LLC in 2016. (www.creativemachine.lighting)
Photos by Michael Blase
-INTERMISSION-
Joan Laage/Kogut Butoh
Rivers Running Red
Created and Performed by Joan Laage/Kogut Butoh
Original musical score by Michael Shannon & Joey Largent
Costumes by Joan Laage & Shoko Zama
Lighting by Ayumu "Poe" Saegusa
Rivers Running Red is a homage to the female body and menstruation. The piece is inspired by an article exposing the practice in certain traditional societies of sending women off to the mountains to remain in huts and, all too often not surviving the harsh conditions. This practice is fueled by the belief that women are unclean while menstruating. The piece is also a reflection on this monthly cycle being celebrated as a sacred passage in other cultures. RRR was first performed as a duet with Italian butoh artist Kea Tonetti in Milan, then as a solo in Pontedera, Italy at Spazio NU during Atsushi Takenouchi’s intensive workshop event and in Antagon theaterAKTion’s Winterwerft Festival in Frankfurt, Germany in 2020, and in DAIPANbutoh Collective’s Seattle Butoh Festival 2021.
Joan Laage studied under Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno and Yoko Ashikawa in Tokyo in the late 80s and performed with Ashikawa’s group Gnome, one of very few non-Japanese to have this extraordinary opportunity. Returning to the US, she settled in Seattle and directed Dappin’ Butoh from 1990-2001. She is a co-founder of DAIPANbutoh Collective, which produces an annual butoh festival. Joan has performed at many festivals including the first New York butoh festival and Vangeline’s Women Defining Butoh Festival, and at Vienna’s Hybrid Butoh Festival and Paris’ En Chair et en Son Acousmatic Festival in 2022. A Ph.D. from Texas Woman’s University, who wrote on the butoh body, and Certified Movement Analyst (NYC), she is featured in Sondra Fraleigh’s books and in Tanya Calamoneri’s Butoh America. She creates site-specific work for Seattle Japanese gardens annually and tours Europe every year. She is an avid Tai Chi practitioner with a background in traditional Asian dance/theater and a professional gardener. Since living in Krakow 2004–2006, she has been known as Kogut (rooster). www.seattlebutoh-laage.com; https://www.facebook.com/joan.laage
Michael Shannon offers performance and recordings of his discoveries into the nature of sound's ontology through the use of strings and wind instruments (Asian, African, and western), electronics, field/studio recordings, and sound objects. Further research into innately occurring abstraction is presented in films and video. Michael’s contributions to the musical score include: erhu, dilruba, cello, sound objects, voice. ryoma2@hotmail.com, joystreetstudios@hotmail.com; Films-video: http://vimeo.com/user7291944
Joey Largent’s work focuses on exploring long-duration compositions and improvisations for acoustic ensembles and solo performance. Beyond generating music alone, his goal is to offer a space for introspection, releasing from attachment, beauty, and connection. He has collaborated with numerous dancers, musicians, and interdisciplinary artists over the years, and has studied North Indian Classical singing with several disciples of Pandit Pran Nath, primarily Michael Harrison and Rose Okada. Joey's contributions to the musical score include cello, voice, sheng, percussion, bowed cymbals and reed organ. www.joeylargent.com
Shoko Zama a Japanese visual artist living in Seattle. She started to study butoh with Joan Laage in 2013. Since then, she has participated in many of Joan’s performances as a butoh dancer and collaborated with her costumes. The white kimono costume in River Running Red was commissioned by Joan in 2019. “IROHA UTA”, a Japanese poem composed around the 11th century, which expresses impermanence of life, was calligraphed with sumi ink, and embellished with gold paint.
Thanks to Katrina Wolfe for her creative input in developing the piece and the music. Thanks to my husband David Thornbrugh who, having seen me from my baby butoh steps in Tokyo in the late 80s, continues to support my journey wherever it takes me. Thanks to Vangeline for bringing me to share my art in NYC.
Photos by r. nihiline
Rivers Running Red is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Director of Production: Anna Wotring
Anna Wotring, a Pittsburgh native, is a community minded dance artist, designer and production stage manager committed to the practice of collaborative leadership. She currently works with Annie Heath, Lauren Horn, Jennifer Nugent and slowdanger as a technical design consultant, dancer, and production stage manager. Wotring obtained her BFA in Dance, at the Five College Dance Department in Western Massachusetts. She has had the privilege of working with a multitude of dance organizations, including Alvin Ailey Studios, Attack Theater, Ballet Des Ameriques, BalletNext, Bill T Jones/Arnie Zane Company, the Dance Conservatory of Pittsburgh, Dance Place, H2O Contemporary Dance, Monica Bill Barnes and Company, New York Live Arts, the Pillow Project, Prayers of the People, RoseAnne Spradlin, Scapegoat Garden, Time Lapse Dance, and many others. Wotring is beyond excited to begin working and imagining with the Trisk team. @annaissupercool
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