New York Butoh Institute
presents
A Free Virtual Butoh Festival Series
Photo by R.Nihiline
Photo by R.Nihiline.
Using humanistic and animal imagery, Corporate explores ideas we struggle with as members of modern societies increasingly influenced by corporate institutions and power structures. Conformity vs. rebellion. Clock time vs. natural time. Could the butoh body liberate time? Economics vs. environment. Duty vs. personal fulfillment. And what kind of world are we striving for anyway?
CREDITS
Created & performed by DAIPANbutoh Collective: Sheri Brown, Joan Laage, Kaoru Okumura, Helen Thorsen & Alycia Scott Zollinger. Collaborator: Dhyana Garcia.
Filmed on November 1 & 2, 2019 at the Taoist Studies Institute (Seattle Butoh Festival 2019).
Video and editing by Kenneth Lee Huntington
Music by Noise Poet Nobody and Lube Fondue, Takayoshi Kudou (Ryuteki), Modular String Trio, Loteria de la Cumbia Lounge.
Made possible by the generous support of 4Culture and Shunpike.
Sheri Brown is Artistic Director of DAIPANbutoh Collective, a choreographer, dance/math/science teacher, and dreamer. She has performed throughout Asia, Europe, South, and North America. A renaissance woman with over 20 years of study and training in butoh from a wealth of masters including Joan Laage, Diego Pinon, Katsura Kan, and a score more. Before the turn of the millennium, Brown earned her BA in Theatre from Arizona State University and Masters in Teaching from the University of Hawaii. For the past two decades, she has traversed the interdimensional bridges metaphysics of mathematics, spirituality, and dance in a uniquely pioneering way of life. Traversing between deeply serious and humorously light, her work physicalizes efforts to expose her demons and liberate her angels. By deconstructing and regenerating roots that energize the soul, she offers her body as a portal for transformation toward true justice and liberty, personally and collectively.
After studying with Butoh masters Kazuo Ohno and Yoko Ashikawa in Tokyo in the late 80s and performing with Ashikawa’s group Gnome, Joan Laage settled in Seattle and founded Dappin’ Butoh in 1990, which she directed until 2001. She is a co-founder of DAIPANbutoh Collective, which produces an annual Butoh festival. Joan performed at the Santiago, New York, Chicago, Portland, Boulder, Seattle, and Paris Butoh festivals, and a Butoh symposium at the University of California (LA). A Ph.D. in Dance & Related Arts from Texas Woman’s University, who wrote on the significance of the body in Butoh, and Certified Movement Analyst, she is featured in Sondra Fraleigh’s books – Dancing into Darkness: Butoh, Zen, and Japan and Butoh: Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy. Joan is also featured in Butoh America written by Tanya Calamoneri, which will be released in August 2021, and is quoted in Vangeline’s recent publication Butoh: Cradling Empty Space. She creates site-specific work for Seattle Japanese gardens annually and tours every winter/spring in Europe where she teaches and performs and continues studying under Atsushi Takenouchi. She is an avid Tai Chi practitioner with a background in traditional Asian dance/theater and a professional gardener. Since living in Krakow from 2004–2006, she has been known as Kogut (rooster).
Kaoru Okumura is a Japanese Butoh performer based in Seattle, US. A fan of Butoh since the 1970s, Kaoru studied Butoh in 1993 at Asbestos-Kan in Tokyo with Akiko Motofuji, the wife of one of butoh’s originators, Tatsumi Hijikata. This is where Kaoru first performed. She started Butoh activities in Seattle in 2008. Since then, she has enjoyed performing with Danse Perdue, KOGUT Butoh, and others, where she experiences how a body bridges the soul and the world. Recently she is focusing on solo work, periodically premiering new pieces at various venues. Kaoru had more than 20 performances a year, including Seattle International Dance Festival, and 9E2 Seattle in collaboration with Google Deep Dream, which was also supported by Google AMI (Artists & Machine Intelligence). Her unique background balances computer technology and the arts. She has a Master of Science degree in mathematical logic and a career as a researcher, developer, and program manager in computer companies with a specialty in natural languages analysis. She also enjoys contributing to the Butoh community as a photographer, and video artist.
Helen Thorsen has a BA in Dance from Columbia College, with an emphasis in contemporary dance & dance therapy. Thorsen has been dancing, creating, and producing dance in Seattle since 1982. She has been a pioneer of butoh and site-specific work in the northwest. Her choreography has been seen widely in Seattle performance venues. She was a founding member of Laage’s Dappin’ Butoh, dancing with them for ten years. Recent choreography includes performances in Boulder, Chicago, London, Chile, and Seattle. Thorsen is Managing Director of DAIPANbutoh Collective and has been producing and performing her choreography in the Seattle Butoh Festival. She has a background of study that includes Butoh, Graham Technique, Limon, Effort/Shape, Cunningham, Yoga, Tai Chi, Skinner Releasing, Ballet, and Pilates. Her work is grounded in universal principles of open-heartedness, acceptance, and presence.
Alycia Scott Zollinger is a healing facilitator, somatic educator, and performance artist dedicated to the interconnection between mind, body, and spirit. She has performed around the globe in spaces ranging from theaters in Russia to balconies in Guatemala, a graveyard in Mexico, desert plateaus in Southern Utah, the streets of Seattle, and art galleries throughout the United States. Rooted in intentional movement as a mode of poetic intervention and connection, she weaves her roots in dance, yoga, innate ritual, Bioenergetics, and Butoh through all of her offerings. She is a long-term student of Diego Pinon, was a member of the Allen Gardner Dance Theater, studying intensively with Sifu Jerry Gardner, as well as with many other masters including Natsu Nakajima, Semimaru, and Joan Laage. She is a graduate of the Seattle School of Body-Psychotherapy, holds a Masters of Art from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and is a Registered Somatic Movement Educator and Therapist with the International Somatic Movement Education and Therapy Association. She has taught yoga, somatic healing, and movement integration since 1999, and continues to train and collaborate with mental health practitioners, somatic educators, and creative wizards.
This project 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 Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.