New York Butoh Institute Festival 2024: Honoring Latin American Women in Butoh
Company:
Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute
Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute presents the New York Butoh Institute Festival 2024: Honoring
Latin American Women in Butoh, featuring Natalia Cuéllar (Chile), Eugenia Vargas (Mexico), as well as
Akihito Ichihara (ELF) and Vangeline on from October 10-20, 2024.
For tickets and more information, please visit click here.
New York Butoh Institute Festival 2024 Program
Performances at Triskelion Arts, 106 Calyer Street, Brooklyn NY 11222
October 10 & 11, 2024 at 8pm: Natalia Cuellar and Eugenia Vargas
October 12, 2024 at 7:30 pm: Akihito Ichihara/ ELF and Vangeline Theater
Panel discussion:
Women, Latin America, and Butoh
October 14, 2024 at 6:30pm
City Lore
Free
With Dr. Alice Baldock (Oxford University), Raquel Almazan, Natalia Cuéllar, Eugenia Vargas and Vangeline.
Since butoh's conception, women have been the intellectual and artistic force behind its co-creation. This is
especially true of butoh in Latin America. Here, dancers such as Natalia and Eugenia are leading a transnational
network of mainly women butoh dancers, whose works speak to audiences across Latin America and the world.
Join them to discuss the previously obscured histories of women in butoh and their importance, as well as the
contemporary moment in which butoh is being shaped by a new generation of women.
Workshops and Masterclasses:
Saturday, October 12, 2024, 3-6 pm:
Butoh Masterclass with Natalia Cuellar
115 Wooster Street 2F New York, NY, 10012
Sunday, October 13, 3-6pm:
Butoh Masterclass with Eugenia Vargas
115 Wooster Street 2F New York, NY, 10012
October 18-20: Performance Workshop with Akihito Ichihara
Friday, October 18, 2024, 7 - 10pm: Workshop Rehearsal
Saturday, October 19, 2024, 1 - 6pm: Workshop Rehearsal
Sunday, October 20, 2024, 2 - 6:30pm: Workshop Rehearsal
Sunday, October 20, 2024, 8 - 9pm: Performance in Times Square, Costumes provided by Akihito Ichihara
Works presented October 10 - 12 At Triskelion Arts
KI, The Breath of Time
Natalia Cuellar. Ruta de La Memoria. (Chile)
“KI , the Breath of Time is a one-woman movement choreography that explores the transcendence of time and
memory from a female perspective. Through the unique experience of childbirth, which also considers abortion as
childbirth, the call of life and death is revealed, creating a poignant reflection on the essence of existence. Until the
beginning of the 20th century and even today, in some countries, childbirth has been a critical moment in the lives
of many women, as it is a thin line between life and death. This crossroads at the moment of giving birth is
presented on stage as a journey where a woman immerses herself in different spaces and times. With the memory
and presence of other women who accompany her on the journey of childbirth, she transforms herself into different
organic matter, to remember and honor the origin of life, of her life,, of the one she is about to give birth to and the
journey to death.
Reviews: “a dance made poetry” — Circulo Critico Arte
Trailer: https://youtu.be/80Jpb22BVJk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2T6rf-hAVdo
UMBRIA or the dream of the moon, an offering for Natsu Nakajima
Eugenia Vargas
Choreography from the UMBRÍA trilogy, created collaboratively between Eugenia Vargas and Tadashi Endo in
2018. Now, Vargas recreates this piece to turn it into the preamble to the presentation of what she calls “Flowers
for the Wolf Girl,” an offering for her teacher and mentor Natsu Nakajima, who died last March in Mexico City.
Trailer: https://vimeo.com/329231435
The Slowest Wave
Vangeline Theater
Vangeline, Director of the New York Butoh Institute, pioneered The Slowest Wave. This piece is not just a solo
performance but a collaborative effort that marks the inception of the first neuroscientific study of Butoh, the
groundbreaking dance form originating in Japan in the 1950s. Developed in partnership with neuroscientists in
2022, This piece resulted in a groundbreaking neuroscientific study, conducted in Houston, Texas, that recorded
the brain activity of Butoh dancers for the first time in history. The Slowest Wave refers to the slowest wave in the
brain, the Delta brain wave. This dance piece explores stillness, femininity, and the wave as a symbol of female
sensuality.
Recent work by Akihito Ichihara: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSy3neX2pBY
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