A Body which Challenges Space

This was a workshop by Butoh artist SU-EN. Workshop description: We begin by focusing on the ”natural body” – with exercises for breathing, gravity, balance and strenght. The emphasis is on our ability to listen to our body’ s impulses and on the ”quality of emptiness” in our movement. Through transformation exercises, improvisation and choreographic exploration, the body is challenged and de-constructed. In re-defining the body and space, new possibilities for an artistic expression and movement are found.

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.