DIEGO PIÑÓN

Diego Piñón’s unique style of teaching and performance incorporates more than 35 years of research in Mexican energetic traditions, Japanese Butoh, ritual dance, modern dance and contemporary theatre. Departing from the guidance of Japanese Butoh masters Kazuo Ohno, Yoshito Ohno, Min Tanaka, Natsu Nakajima, among others, Diego Piñón performs and teaches throughout the US, Canada and Mexico using Butoh Ritual Mexicano as a means to transform personal, cultural and social divides through the dancing body. Piñón explores the question of what it means to be human during these complex times in new and unexpected ways. His unique approach to the body and movement strips away clichés of gender, class, and national identity to reveal a deeply personal vision of humanity beyond the boundaries of convention. Diego’s goal is not only to prepare extraordinary dancers or actors, not only to create extravagant performances, not only to involve the sacred and mystical uses of the stage, but to create an energetic presence that integrates all.

 

YUKIO WAGURI

Born in Tokyo, 1952. The disciple and main male dancer of Tatsumi Hijikata direct lineal. With his rigid and flexible body, a good sharpness of beautiful model, and delicacy nuance, make him able to express his dance delicately. The variety of the dance, mainly base on the change of the subject, shows the new possibility of the future dance. In addition, physical image rouse attention through the words, the unique Butoh Fu of Hijikata lineage; he concentrates on collaboration with the other genre artist at the same time. Publication of the CD-ROM of Butoh Kaden in 1998, provide an opportunity of the dance reevaluation that focus on Hijikata’s method. And currently, other than various kinds of performance activities, he holds dance workshop widely in research organizations, local and overseas universities.

 

YUKIO SUZUKI

Suzuki studied Butoh from 1997 and danced in the works of Ko Murobushi.  In 2000 he started the group “Yukio Suzuki Company.”  He gained attention in the dance world for his documentary style of directing and choreography that uses compelling placement of dancers with a strong emphasis on their physical presence.  In recent years he has expanded his activities as a choreographer with the Tokyo City Ballet and Participated in the TBA Festival (US), Hong Kong Art Festival, Sibiu International Theater Festival and others.  Hi work “Confronting Silence” won the Grand Prix at the Toyota Choreography Awards.

 

MIZU DESIERTO

Mizu is the co-founder and Artistic Director of Portland’s Water in the Desert and The Headwaters Theatre. She is a performer, choreographer and educator whose work explores themes of personal truth, ecological sensitivity and transformation. Mizu has worked with Human Nature Dance Theatre (AZ) for 14 years and was a founding member of The Carpetbag Brigade Physical Theatre (S.F.). She has performed with Harupin-Ha Butoh (S.F.), Yoshito and Kazuo Ohno (Japan), & Diego Piñon (Mexico) and her solo work has been presented internationally. She is a frequent collaborator with Portland State University’s foremost expert on Japanese Performance, Laurenz Kominz, PhD. She has also been a recipient of grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, Oregon’s Regional Arts & Culture Council, Oregon Arts Commission, The Multnomah County Cultural Coalition & The Oregon Cultural Trust. In 2010, she worked as a choreographer for Classic Greek Theatre of Oregon and The Circus Project. Mizu has taught butoh for over a decade and served as adjunct faculty member at Prescott College (Arizona). In July of 2011, she initiated and co-taught a course in Permaculture and Butoh at Portland State University. www.MizuDesierto.com

AMELIA BURNS

During the past nine years, butoh has been Amelia’s primary path of body training and inspiration for performance offerings, and she is grateful for the opportunities to study and perform with Julie Becton Gillum, Diego Piñon, Hiroko and Koichi Tamano, Katsura Kan, and Nathan Montgomery. She recently received her masters from Naropa University in somatic counseling psychology focusing in dance/movement therapy and body psychotherapy, and she is currently publishing an article which integrates these with ecopsychology and develops embodied embedment practices. She continues researching embodied healing through movement, dance, bodywork, yoga, counseling, and relationships with humans as well as the more-than-human worlds with whom we inhabit landscapes. While living in liminal spaces of home and work, she is excited to be helping manifest this year’s Boulder Butoh Festival!

AZUMI OE

Azumi Oe was born and raised in Kyoto, Japan. Since arriving in New York, She mainly received Butoh training from Vangeline, and Katsura Kan. Recently she performed as a principal dancer of the New York base Butoh company Vangeline Theatre in many festivals and events in the US. Katsura Kan’s “Becket Butoh Notations” New York in 2009, ”Oracle & Enigma” LA in August 2010, Paris in March 2011. She joins as a performer and a project assistant to Katja Loher’s Video Sculpture series with choreographer Saori Tsukada. Azumi is constantly at work on wide range of collaborative, solo and experimental dance project.

 

CHRISTOPHER MANKOWSKI

 

For Christopher Mankowski, butoh has become a way to come back home to the voice of the body and attempt to express something otherwise inexpressible. Whether performing in streets, along creeks, or in the theatre, his work attempts to cross physical and social boundaries of the spaces he works in, drawing from the subconscious and the deeply personal. His projects include working with Mizu Desierto Butoh Theatre, Syzygy Butoh, and touring internationally with the Carpetbag Brigade since 2009. Although focusing his studies with Diego Pinon, he recently completed creative research in Japan, working extensively with butoh masters Yoshito Ohno and Natsu Nakajima and performing in the 2010 Kazuo Ohno festival.

 

JENNIFER HICKS

Jennifer Hicks M.F.A., R.Y.T, director of CHIMERAlab Theatre, is a performer, choreographer, teacher and visual artist. She received her MFA from Naropa University in Contemporary Performance, her BFA from Tufts University and Degree in Fine Arts from The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, in Boston. She has been a guest artist at Naropa University in the MFA Contemporary Performance Department for several years and North Western University in Louisiana, among other institutions. Jennifer has won several prestigious awards for her work including The Traveling Scholars Award from The Museum of Fine Arts in Boston and Franklin Furnace for an installation/performance about medicine called “Training For Uncertainty”. She is a member of the performance collective in Boston called Mobius and an original founding member of the former performance collective called Pan 9, also based in Boston.

 

MAUREEN MOMO FREEHILL

Maureen, MFA is a master of being moved & utilized by the forces of nature—with over 30 years experience performing & facilitating Embodied Arts. She is the Founder & Artistic Director of MomoButoh Dance Company, an international collective based in Seattle area (www.momobutoh.net); Founder & Builder of SOMA Pavi11ion: School for Embodied Arts in Nature on Whidbey Island, WA; DailyDance™ & LifeArt Mastery Mentor (www.lifeartmastery.com). Her work springs directly from teachings of Kazuo & Yoshito Ohno; with whom she lived, studied & performed for 5 years in Japan. Her training includes an MFA in Directing Asian Theater from U. of Hawaii, Mombusho in Noh & Butoh at Ochanomizu U. in Tokyo, Dance Therapy at Naropa U. featuring Anna Halprin & certificates in Transpersonal Hypnotherapy & Hatha Yoga Instruction (Shambava/Shoshoni Center). She developed an international network of over 700 butoh enthusiasts (www.butoh.ning.com) as well as a repertoire of over 500 DailyDance™ videos for YearOfButoh (www.dailydance.net). She tours internationally & as guest artist at leading university dance & theater programs including Duke U, U of AZ, Seattle U, Virginia CU, E. Carolina U. & others. Her major butoh performances include solo & group appearances at festivals from Chuncheon, Korea to Asheville, NC.; touring & performances with Kazuo & Yoshito Ohno, Harupin-Ha (Tamanos), Katsura Kan, Joan Laage, P.A.N., Sheri Brown, Alan Sutherland & dancing on the boards with the likes of Nathan Montgomery, Delisa Myles, Melinda & David Harrison, Mizu Desierto & Diego Pinon. She loves to dialogue about Embodied Arts & is currently working on her first book “Keys to a Life of Dancing Freely.”

 

NATHAN MONTGOMERY & SYZYGY BUTOH

“I dance to feed that which is wild and holy in life.  When I succeed my dance becomes food for the beings that keep the world alive.  I dance to measure the distance between a human being and the wild or unknown in nature.  I dance as a way to court matter and re-plant the ground between myself and the world with living grasses upon which the myriad things of the world can live again, not as slaves to an empirical goal but as the free and wild song beings that they are.  I definitely dance to subvert empirical and consumer ideology.”

Nathan Montgomery is the founder and director of Syzygy Butoh based in Boulder, Colorado.  Butoh has chased him for fourteen years now.  His early teacher was Diego Piñon and he has traveled to Japan to work with many teachers including the Ohno family. He teaches and performs throughout the United States.  His approach to both teaching and performing Butoh is rooted in an intimacy with wilderness.  He believes in dance as a way to access our indigenous kind of soul as an expression of wholeness in relation to matter, time and space.  He is the co-founder and director of the Boulder Butoh Festival.

 

SHERI BROWN & ALAN SUTHERLAND

Sheri Brown (sheribrown.com). DAIPANbutoh Collective Artistic Director. First butoh teacher:  Shinichi Iova-Koga.  Primary subsequent teachers:  butoh masters Katsura Kan, Diego Pinon, Joan Laage. Influential other masters: Akira Kasai, Minako Seki, Su-En, Jay Hirobashi, Natsu Nakajima, Yoshito Ohno. Grants received: Conductive Garboil, GAP. Highlights from years with American butoh-inspired troupe P.A.N.: San Francisco Butoh, Overseas Korean Arts, and Chuncheon Mime Festivals.  Solo highlights: Bangkok, Boulder, Asheville and Seattle Butoh Festivals + being selected to tour Europe and Americas with Katsura Kan.   Recently joined Katsura Kan in Seattle International Dance Festival, produced and presented new group work in Next WAVE Seattle Butoh Festival 2011 (daipanbutoh.com), and toured south Japan for fifth time with her Japanese musician collaborator Marron of DubMarronics.  Recently danced as one of four “New Women in Butoh” part of 1Fest in Portland, taught and performed in Seattle Festival of Dance Improvisation in August, and worked with homeless youth in the Outside In program in Portland in a workshop + guerilla performance.  Numerous collaborative performances, her work in DAIPANbutoh Collective (one year from now, in October 2012, they will present the Third WAVE Seattle International Butoh Festival featuring Atsuchi Takenouci and SU-EN!), teaching/producing butoh workshop series in Seattle keep her busy.  She is delighted to return to the Boulder Butoh Festival, this time with dance partner of 11 years, Alan Sutherland.