Butoh Class with Margherita Tisato
Sunday, Oct 4, 2026
5:00-7:00 pm EST
115 Wooster Street
2nd floor dance studio
Hosted by Vangeline Theater / New York Butoh Institute
$25
Margherita is a movement practitioner and a seeker of somatic wisdom and integration.
As a principal dancer with the Sokolow Theatre/Dance Ensemble she has danced with the company for over 10 years. She’s a founding member of Dances We Dance, and is also a Isadora Duncan dancer, studying and performing with Dances by Isadora. As a Butoh artist and teacher, Margherita worked with The Vangeline Theater for over 15 years and has been leading classes and workshops nationally and internationally both independently and as a representative of the New York Butoh Institute. She started Butoh-Somatics, a class inspired by somatic movement principles led through Butoh-based improvisational techniques, during the pandemic and led weekly online classes until this spring.
She facilitates and presents work through a range of movement techniques spanning from modern and contemporary dance, to Butoh, shibari and flesh hook suspension and her offerings are informed by all her practices and interests, including seemingly less embodied subjects like poetry, metaphors, neuroscience, and music.
Aside from performance, Margherita is a movement educator focusing on anatomy, somatic movement, and Trauma-Informed yoga, and her work includes teaching in prisons, therapeutic rehabilitation and alternative to incarceration facilities, as well as individuals affected by Trauma.
She has co-created a curriculum in Embodied Pedagogy for the Johnny Carson Center for Emerging Media Arts at the University of Nebraska Lincoln and is currently working on a research grant to increase emotion detection and processing through embodiment for folk dealing with addiction.
Margherita’s classes rest heavily on somatic techniques as an entry
point into the mind-body state of butoh. We start with a warm-up that introduces the ideas we’ll play with, usually a nugget of developmental movement or anatomical focus, and progressively abstract the idea into more imaginative and improvisational movement, based on butoh techniques. Commitment ot the practice, repetition, and precision become vessels to take us on the journey. We finish together to share the process and the journey, to reconnect with each other.
No previous experience needed in either somatics, anatomy, or butoh, and sharing is completely optional.
Cancellations for all classes must be made 12 hours before the class start time. Students that do not attend the class will not receive any form of credit or exchange.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.