New York Butoh Institute
presents
Women Defining Butoh
A FREE Butoh Festival Virtual Series
Oct 1-31, 2021
available at www.vimeo.com/vangeline
New York Butoh Institute presents a free virtual series highlighting women’s important contributions to butoh. Women Defining Butoh will showcase recent works by two generations of women butoh pioneers.
OCTOBER 1st, 2021
Virtual Opening Ceremony at www.vimeo.com/vangeline
To kick off our festival, New York Butoh Institute is pleased to administer, with support from the National Endowment for the Arts, Lifetime Achievement Awards to Natsu Nakajima, Saga Kobayashi, and Hiroko Tamano.
On October 1st, 2021, watch our virtual opening ceremony at www.vimeo.com/vangeline and watch these three butoh pioneers give their acceptance speech.
Available until October 31, 2021, on Vimeo.
About the Artists
Natsu Nakajima (born in 1943 Sakhalin) has been one of the most prominent figures in butoh dance since its foundation in Tokyo in the 1960s, and one of its foremost pioneers abroad. Training under both Hijikata Tatsumi and Kazuo Ohno, Nakajima went on to establish her own dance company, Muteki-sha, in 1969, with whom she has been performing and choreographing internationally since the early 1980s. Her highly acclaimed performance of ‘Niwa’ at LIFT ‘83 (London) marked the beginning of this international touring career and led to performances at festivals such as FIND (Montreal), the Nancy Festival, and the Sydney Biennale. In addition to her performance and choreographic work, Nakajima has over thirty years of experience as a teacher and has been one of the forerunners of dance for the disabled in Japan. She is still teaching, choreographing, and performing today.
Saga Kobayashi. (Born in Mie Prefecture in 1946). In 1969, she began to study butoh under Tatsumi Hijikata in Tokyo after studying modern dance in Nagoya. She appeared in many of Hijikata’s works from the end of the 1960s to the early 1970s, with Yoko Ashikawa, Momoko Nimura, Koichi Tamano, and Yukio Waguri. She played an important part in the establishment of Hijikata Butoh in the 1970s by appearing in“Twenty-Seven Nights for Four Seasons” held at Art Theater Shinjuku Culture, and the opening performance of Seibu Theater <The Quiet House>. Later, she founded the butoh company, Comet Club. In 1983, she toured Europe with Yoko Ashikawa. Besides her own performances of solo and group, she collaborates with music, video, and theater artists. She also cooperates with the Hijikata Tatsumi Archive at Keio University Art Center launched in 1998. She is still teaching, choreographing, and performing today.
Hiroko Tamano. (Born in 1952 in Fukuoka prefecture, the second of three daughters in a farmer's family). In 1970, she moved to Tokyo to study art. In 1971, she visited Hijikata's studio and joined his company in 1972. She made her stage debut with " 燔儀大踏鑑 ( HanGi DaiTouKwan)" at Kyoto University’s West auditorium. She became Koichi Tamano’s partner and has been working with him ever since. In the late 70s, Koichi and Hiroko moved to the United States, settling in the Bay area. They were the first Japanese butoh settlers on the West Coast. Hiroko has been teaching & introducing butoh to generations of students in the US for 30 years now. She is still teaching, choreographing, and performing today.
This project is supported in part by an award from the National Endowment for the Arts, and by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council, and the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.