Photo by r.nihiline
Vangeline Theater/ New York Butoh Institute
in association with
Triskelion Arts
presents
Joan Laage/Kogut Butoh
Rivers Running Red
April 6-8, 2023
at 8pm
Thursday–Saturday
at
Triskelion Arts
106 Calyer Street (Enter on Banker St)
Brooklyn NY 11222
Vangeline Theater/ New York Butoh Institute, in association with Triskelion Arts, presents Rivers Running Red, an iconic work by American Butoh pioneer Joan Laage.
Performances are at Triskelion Arts.
Tickets are $20 in advance/$25 at the door.
Run of Show:
Vangeline Theater–The Slowest Wave Excerpt–32 minutes
Intermission
Joan Laage/Kogut Butoh–Rivers Running Red–60 minutes
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. It is also a reflection on this monthly cycle being celebrated as a sacred passage in other cultures. With a commissioned score by Joan’s frequent Seattle collaborators Michael Shannon and Joey Largent and costume by Seattle artist Shoko Zama, it 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 more recently, in DAIPANbutoh Collective’s Seattle Butoh Festival 2021.
ABOUT THE ARTISTS
After studying with Kazuo Ohno and Yoko Ashikawa in Tokyo in the late 80s and performing with Ashikawa’s group Gnome, Joan Laage/Kogut Butoh 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 most recently, at Vienna’s Hybrid Butoh Festival and Paris’ En Chair et en Son Acousmatic Festival. 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 every winter in Europe. 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).
ABOUT VANGELINE
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.
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.
VANGELINE THEATER/ NEW YORK BUTOH INSTITUTE aims to preserve the legacy and integrity of Japanese Butoh while carrying the art form well 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.
TRISKELION ARTS, lovingly referred to as Trisk, is a nonprofit organization and live performance venue. We act as an incubator for NYC-based dance and movement artists offering high-quality, sustainable opportunities to create and present work. We partner with artists creating trailblazing work that broadens the cultural dialogue and elevates our community's many voices and perspectives. We present artists practicing, crafting, mining, experimenting, speaking up, and speaking out. We are a band of creatives, nimble, hospitable, crafty, and constantly inspired. We build our community, programming, and output to be heard. And, we honor the core of what Trisk is founded on: a home for artists and audiences to create and connect, to make things happen, to make magic. Our mission is to clear a pathway for artists to focus on being artists.
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.
