“Part Marcel Marceau, part Mick Jagger, Kasai would leap into the air but start another step before landing… his low groans and high sighs all seemed part of a kind of existential fun.” Dance Magazine

“Yuko Kaseki is the Ginger Rogers of Butoh. Time speeds up and then slows, and childlike play and sexual prowess whirl around with humor either wry or raucous.” San Francisco Bay Guardian

“Yuko Kaseki is the Ginger Rogers of Butoh. Time speeds up and then slows, and childlike play and sexual prowess whirl around with humor either wry or raucous.” San Francisco Bay Guardian

“‘Quick Silver” was full of piercing accuracy. With a prizefighter’s grace, he darted from spot to spot, collapsing backward onto the stage only to spring up in a mercuric flash.” – Gia Kourlas, The New York Times

“Murobushi’s Butoh is a theatre of revulsion, convulsion or repulsion. The body is like a half-monkey, half-reptile. It recurves and always crawls on the round, full of violent energy, soft, anti-human, and cannibal. There is no form of Occidental physical naturalism.” – Jean Baudrillard, Theatre of Revulsion

“Musilova hangs upside down from a swath of fabric in Loud. Heavy machinery sounds blare and a bare light bulb dangles, sputtering on and off as Musilova, in a tight red top, hangs motionless, her eyes possessed. She gallops and rolls wildly and incessantly across the floor, kicking and hitting herself. Knees knocked inwards, she stands and stares at the audience, her head shaking and eyes fluttering, like a little girl betrayed. She walks a beautiful line between darkness and vulnerability.” – Erika Eichelberger,”CAVE New York Butoh Festival – The Butoh-Kan Phase October 23-November 25, 2009″, The Brooklyn Rail, 2009

“Irem Calikusu and Denisa Musilova offered the most captivating performances. In Calikusu’s Texture II, a block of ice hangs in the dark and drips over her naked bent body. She jolts intermittently, as if involuntarily, and slowly, brokenly unfurls. She’s like an insect trapped in a glacier.” – Erika Eichelberger,”CAVE New York Butoh Festival – The Butoh-Kan Phase October 23-November 25, 2009″, The Brooklyn Rail, 2009

“Bill Mullen created a Beckettian piece that seemed more like a spoof. He begins in a suit with a bag over his head, then walks around with a plastic ear on a cane. “It’s all empty,” he tells us. It’s not the content that lacks; it’s his delivery that seems strained.” – Erika Eichelberger,”CAVE New York Butoh Festival – The Butoh-Kan Phase October 23-November 25, 2009″, The Brooklyn Rail, 2009

“Later, the timeless, nightmarish court jester half-dons a dress and throws his red shoes. He slips one shoe on and walks haltingly, bobbing his head. He is an old lady with Alzheimer’s flirting with herself. He limps slowly, each step like a day, creating a string of days, like the arc of one life.” – Erika Eichelberger,”CAVE New York Butoh Festival – The Butoh-Kan Phase October 23-November 25, 2009″, The Brooklyn Rail, 2009

“The New York Butoh Festival—the Butoh-Kan Phase, organized by CAVE Arts Space in Williamsburg, brought a refreshingly stark contrast into this city’s dance scene for three weeks in October and November. While previous festivals focused on presenting butoh masters only, the Fourth Biennial celebrated the culmination of CAVE’s two-year pilot Butoh-Kan training program by including works by CAVE’s resident company LEIMAY and by emerging artists in the training program along with renowned butoh masters Ko Murobushi, Daisuke Yoshimoto, Mari Osanai, and Yuko Kaseki. The festival also offered workshops with butoh masters and discussion panels with the artists.” – Erika Eichelberger,”CAVE … Continued

“The New York Butoh Festival—the Butoh-Kan Phase, organized by CAVE Arts Space in Williamsburg, brought a refreshingly stark contrast into this city’s dance scene for three weeks in October and November. While previous festivals focused on presenting butoh masters only, the Fourth Biennial celebrated the culmination of CAVE’s two-year pilot Butoh-Kan training program by including works by CAVE’s resident company LEIMAY and by emerging artists in the training program along with renowned butoh masters Ko Murobushi, Daisuke Yoshimoto, Mari Osanai, and Yuko Kaseki. The festival also offered workshops with butoh masters and discussion panels with the artists.” – Erika Eichelberger,”CAVE … Continued

“Yoshimoto’s Ruined Body at DNA takes us around different dark corners as it stretches time and some nerves as well. He appears painted white, with blue eye shadow, red lips, and a spray of gray hair, in a magnificent tapestried paper cloak with Renaissance ruffle. The candle he holds is the only light onstage; it illuminates the maniacal grin stretched across his face as we listen to what sounds like Bach on a dusty gramophone. He advances slowly, slowly, slowly towards us. I’m afraid he’ll eat me. He makes his way glacially to a chair and sinks into a crouch, … Continued

“The New York Butoh Festival—the Butoh-Kan Phase, organized by CAVE Arts Space in Williamsburg, brought a refreshingly stark contrast into this city’s dance scene for three weeks in October and November. While previous festivals focused on presenting butoh masters only, the Fourth Biennial celebrated the culmination of CAVE’s two-year pilot Butoh-Kan training program by including works by CAVE’s resident company LEIMAY and by emerging artists in the training program along with renowned butoh masters Ko Murobushi, Daisuke Yoshimoto, Mari Osanai, and Yuko Kaseki. The festival also offered workshops with butoh masters and discussion panels with the artists.” – Erika Eichelberger,”CAVE … Continued

“The New York Butoh Festival—the Butoh-Kan Phase, organized by CAVE Arts Space in Williamsburg, brought a refreshingly stark contrast into this city’s dance scene for three weeks in October and November. While previous festivals focused on presenting butoh masters only, the Fourth Biennial celebrated the culmination of CAVE’s two-year pilot Butoh-Kan training program by including works by CAVE’s resident company LEIMAY and by emerging artists in the training program along with renowned butoh masters Ko Murobushi, Daisuke Yoshimoto, Mari Osanai, and Yuko Kaseki. The festival also offered workshops with butoh masters and discussion panels with the artists.” – Erika Eichelberger,”CAVE … Continued

“In ‘Quick Silver,’ Mr. Murobushi does indeed show an extensive ability to move extremely slowly or extremely fast, to hold a position for a length of time and then change it by infinitesimal motion. And he conforms to other notions about Butoh: for much of the solo he is almost naked, his body and head covered in light gold paint; his physical presence seems more animal than human, any vestige of personality stripped to something more elemental. Even at the start of ‘Quick Silver,’ when Mr. Murobushi is dressed in loose-fitting pants and jacket, his head is wrapped so that … Continued

“In ‘Quick Silver,’ Mr. Murobushi does indeed show an extensive ability to move extremely slowly or extremely fast, to hold a position for a length of time and then change it by infinitesimal motion. And he conforms to other notions about Butoh: for much of the solo he is almost naked, his body and head covered in light gold paint; his physical presence seems more animal than human, any vestige of personality stripped to something more elemental.” – Roslyn Sulcas, “Japanese Form Mixes Discipline and the Elemental”, The New York Times, 2009

“She is simply breathtaking, possessing a supple body that seems to have no spine, yet is anchored on a steel spike of consummate control. She is inspired by the natural elements, and her slow, methodical, yet radiantly beautiful explorations of physicality take her dance to a higher plane.” – Dance International

“…his long gray hair fanned around his wild, heavily made-up eyes, and his body became a heaving, hyperarticulated landscape shifting against jarringly spliced music. It was easy to forget that this spooky, otherworldly creature was human.” Claudia La Rocco, The New York Times

“In his dance Yoshimoto continuously transforms himself; he suddenly changes into a young man, then becomes a baby, and in a second later a wild animal raging onstage with incredible determination and vitality…” – Dziennik Zachodni, Poland