Shadowbloom–photo by Elsa Wong
Vangeline Theater
New York Butoh Institute
presents
Queer Butoh 2022 online
“…queer themes and imagery have been reoccurring, if not instrumental, in Butoh. The concepts of otherness and ambiguity, particularly with respect to gender identity and sexuality, permeate its narratives. Drag, androgyny and fluidity are staple elements.”
- The New York Times, Queer Butoh: Finding Belonging in the Dance of Darkness, 2020
The online performances will be available to screen on-demand June 1-30, 2022 at www.vimeo.com/vangeline. The programming features Born to Transform with Fer Zam (Mexico); Yarli &Yin’s short film Wrestling Blues (Hong Kong/United Kingdom) with butoh dancer Mavi Haro; and Shadowbloom with Xue and Mervin Wong (Singapore).
Film: shadowbloom (2022)
Runtime: 8.16 Minutes
Produced In: Singapore
Directed By: Elsa Wong
Produced By: Xue
Original Soundtrack By: Mervin Wong
Starring: Xue, Mervin Wong, ‘gahara’
Shadowbloom is an experimental short film directed by Elsa Wong, featuring performances by Xue and Mervin Wong. Using surrealistic tropes, the film is a bizarre yet tender expression of a shared dream of nighttime.
ARTISTS BIOS Xue (@_x.u.e_) Xue is a Singaporean performance artist and butoh practitioner. As a butoh dancer, Xue has exhibited butoh work for The Online New York Butoh Institute Festival (2020) and was one of the featured artists of the Online Queer Butoh Festival (2021) presented by Vangeline Theater/ New York Butoh Institute. In 2021, Xue also presented their work ‘SLEEPWALKERS’ at Dance Nucleus’s Scope #11. For XUE, butoh is the truest expression of spirit.
Mervin Wong (@mervinwong00) Mervin Wong is a performer. Raised in chambers of string, it took a moment for him to recognize the Viola as his truest limb. The tectonic shift to this deeper, enduring register has shaped his foray into electronic music-making. Mournful but reft of grief. Mervin Wong’s long-form sensibilities rouse our waterflesh. Years of forging his intention allow his process to be bright with speed. In service of resonance, every grain is burnished to the bone. A canoe made of ice. His sounds return to matter. Where footsteps span lightyears. Waves seethe and where the cosmos can glide through an albatross. Mervin Wong is a performer, violist, composer, and electronic producer. He is an artist that is deeply dedicated to the shared experience of sound.
Elsa Wong (@yo.k3) Elsa Wong practices with mediums such as photography, videography and set design. She materialises by imagining environments and proceeds to build them or finds an environment she is intrigued to explore. These minute moments and interactions between human/objects/environments are captured and presented as still/moving images and installations. In 2019, she formed the art collective PURE EVER with 4 other members. Within their projects they explore the digital and physical realm and often include multi-disciplinary collaborations. Most recently, they created a film commissioned by Asian Film Archive titled Sunset X which was screened at State of Motion 2021. Elsa was also part of the fashion collective Youths In Balaclava from 2017-2021 where she helmed the roles of art direction and photography. She worked mainly on the brand’s campaigns which have been featured on i-D and Female Magazine Singapore. Individually, Elsa has worked primarily as an art director on music videos. Most recently, she worked on a music video for monzoom.xyz’s program- Total Eclipse Plumage which features Subsonic Eye’s track Last Day.
Wrestling Blues
Yarli and Yin are London-based artist and writer who combine their artistic and writing skills to reveal identities of diasporic Asians in the European queer scene. The uncomfortable taboos on body-shame around East/SouthEast Asian community continue to grow strong, which fosters Yarli & Yin to experiment with ways to address diverse sexuality and body positivity.
Mavi Haro (b. 1983, Palma de Majorque, Spain) is a Paris-based anthropologist (PhD), nurse and butô dancer. Gyohei Zaitsu, Iwana Masaki and Moeno Wakamatsu, their masters, influence her style and her butô philosophy inspired by human emotions.
Screening History 1-4 OCT 2020.........[Cinema Screening] PFF Vienna, Arthouse Vienna and Schikaneder, Vienna 9 OCT 2020.........[Online Screening] HOAX Publication , London, UK 30 NOV & 04 DEC 2020.........[Cinema Screening] International Queer Shorts - Self and Liberty programme, HKLGFF 香港同志影展 , Hong Kong 27 MAR 2021.........[Cinema Screening] Wrestling Blues, International Queer Shorts, HKLGFF, The One, Hong Kong JUN 2021.........[Online Screening + Talk] QueerAsias: Virtual Cartographies of Desires, London, Asia, Art, Worlds, Paul Mellon Centre, London
Fer Zam (Mexico) in Born to transform.
Fim credits:
Butoh Dancer: FerZam
Make up: Juan Peralta
Collaborators: Angela Reyna & Brian Hansen
Filmed, edited, and directed by Iván Aguirre
Music: Gonjasufi - "Change" (Shlomo Remix) Album The Caliph's Tea Party
FerZam Artist Statement
I am a performing artist committed to working with the body as the maximum vehicle of expression. Connecting with my work requires reflection on the open body and the surrendered body. Situated at a point where dance and theater converge, my work emerges in service of unity and is made up of distances that open up between the body that is stripped down and, in turn, the body that confirms oneself. This dance of darkening light also envelops us in an agonizing flayed rhythm that wrestles with embodying a posture of facing life. The Spectator is not only one who looks, but is a witness of and accomplice to a trance that transforms and transfigures an understanding of the body, becoming one with the one who is looked at, collapsing the distances that open between the body and oneself. Syncopated, ethereal, vaporous movements, the body as a place where time and space contract and expand, systole and diastole, paradoxically expansive opposition. The opportunity to open up to a post-orgasmic sensation that invites you to confirm the encounter and the presence of the other.