New York Butoh Institute

 presents

A Free Virtual Butoh Festival Series

Joan Laage-Kogut Butoh–Photo by David Jennings

October 22 to October 30th, 2021:

Joan Laage-Kogut Butoh

Earth Tomes

Available at www.vimeo.com/vangeline

FREE

Photo by Lori Farr

Earth Tomes (2015) and Earth Tomes (2016), performed by Joan Laage-Kogut Butoh in February 2015, March 2016 in Malmö, Sweden.

Earth Tomes was first performed as a site-specific solo in a greenhouse in Malmo as part of the Archiving Memory Symposium in February 2015. The series of collaborations began in Seattle in February with eight other dancers paving the way for Joan’s March 2016 European tour, where collaborations included performers in Liverpool, London, and Freiburg, and this solo form in Malmo. Since then, the hour-long piece has been performed in Pontedera, Italy, in collaboration with the Butoh Laboratorium in Oslo and in a residency in New York, and most recently, in Port Townsend, WA. In this age of increasing use of technology to direct and control so many aspects of our daily lives, Earth Tomes is a welcome revelation of the body as earth and, through continual transformation, reveals the changing landscape of the body. Joan created a sound score with the music of local musicians for the first ET, then commissioned London sound artist Lee Berwick.

CREDITS

Video and editing: Jacek Smolicki (2015); Jacek Smolicki and Kaoru Okumura (2016).

Sound Collage: Kogut with music by Stuart Dempster, Jeff Greinke, Tucker Martine, brYan (2015); Lee Berwick (commissioned score–2016).

Thanks to Susan Kozel (Malmö University, Sweden).

Joan Laage. After studying with Butoh masters Kazuo Ohno and Yoko Ashikawa in Tokyo in the late 80s and performing with Ashikawa’s group Gnome, Joan Laage settled in Seattle and founded Dappin’ Butoh in 1990, which she directed until 2001. She is a co-founder of DAIPANbutoh Collective, which produces an annual Butoh festival. Joan performed at the Santiago, New York, Chicago, Portland, Boulder, Seattle, and Paris Butoh festivals, and a Butoh symposium at the University of California (LA). A Ph.D. in Dance & Related Arts from Texas Woman’s University, who wrote on the significance of the body in Butoh, and Certified Movement Analyst, she is featured in Sondra Fraleigh’s books – Dancing into Darkness: Butoh, Zen, and Japan and Butoh: Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy. Joan is also featured in Butoh America written by Tanya Calamoneri, which will be released in August 2021, and is quoted in Vangeline’s recent publication Butoh: Cradling Empty Space. She creates site-specific work for Seattle Japanese gardens annually and tours every winter/spring in Europe where she teaches and performs and continues studying under Atsushi Takenouchi. She is an avid Tai Chi practitioner with a background in traditional Asian dance/theater and a professional gardener. Since living in Krakow from 2004–2006, she has been known as Kogut (rooster).

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.