Vangeline Theater/ New York Butoh Institute
presents
Sitting With It
A collection of butoh short films
as part of
The Online New York Butoh Institute Festival 2020
October 15, 2020, at 8 pm
$5
BUY TICKETS FOR ZOOM SCREENING
To launch the New York Butoh Institute Festival 2020, the Vangeline Theater/ New York Butoh Institute is proud to present a collection of short films from around the world. The work presented is an exciting new medium: a hybrid between film, poetry, visual arts, and butoh. The last four short films featured are a direct response to the 2020 pandemic.
Sitting with it will be screened via Zoom on October 15 at 8 pm. Tickets are available for $5. The screening will last 70 minutes.
LINE UP
1. Aurora's Aura by Nicholas Motyka (USA/Japan). 6 min.
A woman of wealth takes a human puppet out for a tour around the Big Apple. Adapted from a poem by Edwin Torres.
Cast
Azumi Oe as The Puppet
Stacey Smith as The Puppeteer
Rae Nelson as The Narrator
Crew
Concept / director / editor - Nicholas Motyka
Cinematography - Sultan Thahir & Nicholas Motyka
Music by Godfrey Furchtgott
Produced by Azumi Oe & Nicholas Motyka
Adapted from a poem by Edwin Torres
Costume created by Azumi Oe
2. Living Room by Kori Koolman (Israel/ USA). 22:55 min.
In Living Room, Kori Koolman simultaneously embodies the roles of both a man and a woman. The two characters sit in the remnants of a domestic space, navigating their steps and mis/communicating with each other.
Choreography and performance: Kori Koolman
Costume design: Einat Sanderovich
Video and sound design: Fame After Death
Music: Throne Of Blood Original Soundtrack - composed by Masaru Sato; Requiem Mass in D Minor, K. 626: I. Introitus: Requiem aeternam, composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, performed by Slovak Philharmonic Orchestra; Always On My Mind (Karaoke Version), written by Willie Nelson, performed by Kori Koolman
3. Resting Bell by Sher Chew (Singapore). 11:26 min.
Resting Bell embodies a state of unrest.
The piece is performed on the surface of a table.
With limited space to travel, the body has no place to go.
Edited, filmed and performed by Sher Chew in Singapore.
Music by ACDG (AvantGarde Dewa Gugat), a solo experimental noise project by Dewa Gugat.
4. Storm by Stéphanie Larrière (France/USA). 7 min.
Storm is an invitation, a shift in perception. Nourished by a transformative experience with Shipibo Shamans from the Amazon and by many readings on our relation to space, time, memory, and our connection with our environment over the years, Stéphanie Larrière has been questioning and challenging our cultural constructs of Reality and our place in the world.
Filmed by Sarah Andrew and Stéphanie Larrière at Sunset Park, Brooklyn, New York.
Edited and Performed by Stéphanie Larrière.
Soundscape by Allyson Sniffin with excerpts of Icaros by Shipibo Shamans from the Amazon.
5. Sitting with it by Melissa Lohman (Italy/ USA). 11 min.
I think of it as something I can visit whenever I need, by bringing my awareness to it.
I imagine it as a formless, enigmatic, enticing treasure I can simply sit near for a while, without the need to define it.
It is perpetual.
It is potential.
It has no answers for me.
Performed by Melissa Lohman and Flavio Arcangeli.
Video filmed and edited by Melissa Lohman in Italy.
6. 2020SavetheLife by Alana Rosa (BRAZIL). 13 min.
2020SavetheLife is a lament extracted from my own dance that came from my experience of the quarantine where I stayed approximately four months without leaving my home, except to go to the supermarket and the pharmacy when necessary. The first part of the performance reveals the cage that our house became, and with it came fear, uncertainty, and the loneliness from which I managed to transform into solitude. The second part shows the virtual connection by optical wires, where the Internet kept me in touch with the reality of a world full of political mistakes, generating violence, racism, using the sounds of New York life as a backdrop. Finally, I dance the hope of life, where there is a desire for peace for humanity claimed by me in Portuguese.
Performance: Alana Rosa
Filmed in New Jersey.
Video by Erika Fujyama.
ARTIST BIOS
Sher Chew is a performance artist and butoh dancer from Singapore whose art practice is a persistent exercise in articulation. In defiance of the structural limitations of literacy and its inherent violence, she wields the materiality of the body as her primary mode of expression. In order to transcend her default physical vocabulary, she provokes new forms of embodiment by performing ritual interactions with symbolic objects or through applied constraints. By using her body as a site of negotiation, she rescripts innate patterns, seeking emancipation from deeply embedded genealogical systems of control. https://www.sherchew.info/
Kori Koolman is a multidisciplinary artist and an art educator from Israel. She is based in New York. Her works have been exhibited and screened nationally and internationally, at film festivals and art institutions. For the past six years, she has been a student of the Vangeline Theater / New York Butoh Institute. Instagram: @korikoolman7
Stéphanie Larrière is a native French and Brooklyn-based teaching artist, educator, and performer who has been leading multidisciplinary dance and music groups in New York as a professional tap dancer. She has been discovering and embracing butoh dance over the last couple of years under the teaching and guidance of Vangeline and the Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute, a revelation to her approach to dance and life. Over the last year, she has been integrating butoh into performances with musicians, singers, and light and shadow puppeteers and hosting Resonances, a new series of performances and conversations on our perception of reality.
Melissa Lohman is a performance, dance, and visual artist from New York City currently living in Rome, Italy. She completed her BFA in 2000 at the School of Visual Arts, NYC. She has been making solo work and collaborating with musicians, photographers, poets and visual artists since 1996. She creates pieces for theatrical and non-theatrical spaces. Among other disciplines she has studied, Butoh and Noguchi Taiso have informed her work. She teaches dance and movement, basing her approach on the concept of the body as conductive, with a much longer memory than the individual who inhabits it. Melissa has been collaborating with Flavio Arcangeli since 2011. Flavio is a performer, painter and yoga teacher from Rome, Italy. www.melissalohman.com
Nicholas Motyka was born and raised in suburban Western Massachusetts. Though his small town upbringing would be relatively standard, he began experiencing death from a very young age causing his already wandering mind to question life, its purpose and what might be beyond. Motyka's fascination with the medium of filmmaking would grow exponentially throughout his childhood and teens eventually leading him to study at SUNY Purchase for only two years until dropping out in pursuit of a career in underground, independent filmmaking in New York City.
Azumi O E was born and raised in Kyoto, Japan. She is a former principal dancer of New York-based butoh company Vangeline Theater and performed with the company for over eight years. She worked as Butoh Master Katsura Kan’s assistant choreographer/main dancer on several world tours. As an expansion of her butoh career, she works as a dancer/choreographer for video sculpture artist Katja Loher, does collaborative work for MARCK’s video art and live performances. She is also part of a duo project with bassist Sean Ali, and is involved in many other interactive tech/sound/stage-visual projects, experimental film, and art/sound
Alana Rosa is an actress and butoh dancer from Brazil. In 2015, Alana received the award for Best Actress from the Brazilian Press Award. Alana has participated in the project Beyond Fashion at Garment District in New York since 2014. She has danced in the butoh offerings at Time Square lead by Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute on September 11, 2016, and 2019, and presented her solo Between at the New York Butoh Festival 2018. www.alanarosa.com
Stacy Lynn Smith is a neurodivergent, biracial/Black dancer/performance artist specializing in butoh, contemporary dance and experimental theater, creating work through a unique lens of the “Other”. She was a principal butoh dancer with Vangeline Theater from 2008 to 2017. Most recently, she has been in a collaborative process with Jasmine Hearn, Donna Costello, Alex Romania, Rakia Seaborn, Jill Sigman/think dance, and Kathy Westwater. She is a member of the artist/activist cohort Body Politic. Stacy was selected by Eva Yaa Asantewaa as part of the curatorial board producing Black Womxn Summit and was awarded a 2020 Queens Arts Fund (QAF) New Work Grant.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.