Butoh Class with Vangeline

Sunday January 11, 2026

5-7pm

115 Wooster Street

Dance studio —2nd floor

Soho

Vangeline is a New York–based teacher, choreographer, and dancer specializing in Japanese Butoh. As artistic director of the Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute, she is known for a rigorous, research-driven approach that bridges traditional Butoh with contemporary somatic, psychological, and scientific inquiry.

Her approach combines traditional Butoh with new research about the body and the nervous system. Through her work on The Slowest Wave—the first scientific study to look at what happens in the brain during Butoh—she has developed a gentle, bone-led method that helps students slow down, feel supported, and access new layers of presence. She is also creating a new way to “map” Butoh from the inside, helping dancers understand how sensation, emotion, and movement connect.

A specialist in trauma-informed pedagogy, Vangeline’s work centers accessibility, precision, and deep states of embodied attention. She is widely recognized for expanding the relevance of Butoh in the 21st century and for creating space for historically marginalized voices.

Her choreography has been presented internationally, and she is the recipient of a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Dance Award for The Slowest Wave. She has taught at Princeton (Princeton Atelier), Cornell, NYU, CUNY, Sarah Lawrence, Duke University, and other institutions.

Vangeline is also the author of Butoh: Cradling Empty Space, and her work has been featured in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, BBC’s Deeply Human, and CNN’s Great Big Story.