Embodying the Spirit

This was a workshop by Butoh artist Joan Laage. In this workshop, Embodying the Spirit, we re-experience the body’s developmental journey. We start by exploring our fetal self- through awareness of our developmental patterning and the body’s gowing and shrinking cells. We continue to transform from one natural element to another through awareness of the flow of breath and energy: from earth, to stone, to air, to water. This layering process continues with the addition of imagery (through words and pictures) as we move from chaos to form.

The first New York Butoh Festival was a festival celebrating the origins and the international evolution of this vital form. Butoh dance emerged in post-World War II Japan and has become a worldwide movement influencing artists in many disciplines. This festival presented emerging artists and established masters from Japan, Europe and the Eastern and Western coasts of the U.S. The New York Butoh Festival served as an East Coast hub for a growing regional and international network of butoh performers and audiences, and was presented by CAVE Organization, the oldest existing experimental art space in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Since its conception in 1996 as an artists-in-residence, gallery and performance space, the CAVE has confronted the complex challenges and possibilities of the urban landscape.

The New York Butoh Festival reflects the organization’s intention to attract, provoke and support exploration, generative confrontation and collaboration among artists and audiences from diverse disciplines and cultures. This festival was created through donated work, and we are grateful to the performers, staff and volunteers who have made it possible.