Joan Laage is a choreographer, performer and dance educator who is regarded as the pioneer of Butoh in the Pacific Northwest. While living in Japan, Joan studied and trained with Yoko Ashikawa (the major disciple of Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata) and with Butoh master Kazuo Ohno in Tokyo.  Joan performed with Yoko Ashikawa’s legendary Butoh troupe, Gnome, in the 1980’s and is one of the few non-Japanese dancers to have trained with Ashikawa. Joan continues to performs internationally ever year and she has been a featured artist at national and international Butoh festivals since the 1990’s including the New York Butoh Festival and the UCLA Butoh Symposium. Her pioneering PhD dissertation research titled “Embodying The Spirit: The Paradox of Performing The Body in Butoh” has been presented at dozens of academic conferences and symposiums around the world. 

In addition to over 35 years of teaching and thousands of performances over the years, Joan Laage is responsible for bringing the art form of Butoh to Seattle in 1990.  She continues to perform annually at the Seattle Japanese Garden, where she is a docent, and at the Kubota Garden Foundation.  Joan's work is highlighted in the award-winning books “DANCING INTO DARKNESS: BUTOH, ZEN AND JAPAN” and “Butoh: Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy” by dance scholar Sondra Fraleigh as well as “BUTH AMERICA: Butoh Dance in the United States and Mexico from 1970 to the early 2000s” by Tanya Calamoneri.

Rosemary Candelario is an Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre & Dance at The University of Texas in Austin and co-founder of the BUTOH NEXT international symposium.  Rosemary writes about and makes danced engaged with the outdoors, ecology, and site-specific performance.  Rosemary Candelario specializes in the Japanese avant-garde movement form, Butoh, which she has studied, taught, and performed across the United States and around the world.  Her choreography has been produced across the United States and in Japan.  Rosemary creates solo works for the stage and outdoor site-specific ensemble works through which the audience moves, both largely focused on exploring how dance develops relationships between humans and the environment.

 Recent artistic premieres include aqueous at the 2019 Kyoto Butoh Festival in Japan and 100 Ways to Kiss the Trees in Denton, Texas.  She is the recipient of the 2018 Oscar G. Brockett Book Prize for Dance Research for her book Flowers Cracking Concrete: Eiko & Koma's Asian/American Choreographies (Wesleyan University Press 2016).  Rosemary is also the co-editor with Bruce Baird of The Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance (2018).  She holds a PhD in Culture and Performance from UCLA.  www.rosemarycandelario.net 

Julie has been creating, performing and teaching dance in the USA, Europe, Asia, Cuba and Mexico for over 40 years.  She has performed at international Butoh and performance art festivals including San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Boulder, Seattle and Kolkata.  Since 2019, Julie has toured with Butoh Lantern, (butohlantern.com)  throughout Europe and India.

Julie has received numerous grants and awards for her choreography, including the prestigious 2008-09 North Carolina Choreography Fellowship Award which she used to travel to Japan for continued training in Butoh, her primary form of artistic expression.  Julie has trained intensively with master Butoh artists including: Diego Piñón  Mari Osanai, the late Yoshito Ohno, Natsu Nakajima, Anzu Furukawa and Seisaku.  

As the founder and Artistic Director of the Asheville Butoh Festival, (FB: Asheville Butoh Collective), Gilum has collaborated with a wide variety of performers from all over the world and has hosted many artists throughout the 14 seasons of the festival including: Ken Mai, Yuko Kaseki, Yumiko Yoshioka, Itto Morito, Joan Laage, Vangeline, Nicole LeGette, Vanessa Skantze, Seisaku, Yuri Nagaoka and more. 

Jacquelyn Marie Shannon is a performance and ritual artist, choreographer and teacher heavily influenced by Butoh, avant-garde theater, spiritualism, and the nostalgic mythos and mysticism of the south. Since her introduction to Butoh in 2006, Jacquelyn is thankful to have studied under a variety of master teachers, with particular gratitude to Anastazia Louise Aranaga and Diego Piñón, and has produced and performed both solo and ensemble-based work across the United States. Jacquelyn holds a Master's Degree from Indiana University where she studied Butoh and other expressive modalities through theories of affect, performance and visual and embodied poetics. Her current projects explore spaces of exchange between haunting, corporeality, magic and materiality through living installation, ritual and multi-media performance with an emphasis on the affective, precarious, poetic body.

Jacquelyn is currently a PhD Candidate in Theatre and Performance at City University of New York (CUNY) Graduate Center. Her research focuses on the hidden, unseen, or unspeakable, investigating instances in theatre and performance in which the evocation of unseen or supernatural forces do transformative social, cultural, and political work. She is especially interested in ghosts and haunting, spiritualism and seance, ceremonial magic and witchcraft, shamanic ritual, and neo-pagan, occult practices and performance. Jacquelyn continues to research Butoh as a poetic equipment for living, for manifesting radical possibility, and for personal and social transformation.

Yuko Kaseki is a Japanese Butoh dancer, performer, improviser, choreographer and teacher based in Berlin, Germany. She studied performing arts at the Braunschweig University of Fine Arts and also trained with Anzu Furukawa of the legendary Japanese Butoh company DAIRAKUDAKAN. For over a decade, Yuko studied Butoh with Furukawa and danced in two of her performance companies: Dance Butter Tokio and Verwandlungsamt. Yuko moved to Berlin in 1995 and founded the company Cokaseki, which is still active to this day. Cokaseki is an ensemble for performative research around dance, visual arts and experimental music in live events and improvisations at theaters, galleries, site specific spaces, and film. Her strong interest in breaking the border of physical existence leads to projects with mixed ability artists and performers. Yuko's artwork incorporates the spirit of Butoh and also borrows from avant-garde Performance Art using physical objects, literary texts and experimental writings, and Live soundscapes.

Yuko has performed in Europe, the USA, Canada, Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, Australia, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. She has collaborated with numerous international artists and companies, including inkBoat (San Francisco), CAVE (New York City), Antonis Anissegos (Berlin), Isak Immanuel/Tableau Stations (San Francisco) and Theater Thikwa (Berlin). Her performance “Ame to Ame” received the Isadora Duncan Dance Award in San Francisco for best ensemble performance; “Tooboe” was nominated for the Dora Mavor Moore Award in Toronto for outstanding production; and “Kudan” was nominated for the Toyota Choreography Award 2004 in Tokyo, Japan.

Katsura Kan is a Butoh dancer and choreographer from Kyoto, Japan and among the ranks of Japan's senior generation of Butoh. In 1979, Kan began his career as a dancer with the seminal Butoh troupe Byakkosha (one of the most influential dance groups under the Lineage of Butoh founder Hijikata), known for their theatrically explosive, provocative, and highly charged performance style. In 1985, Kan trained and worked with Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata during Hijikata’s final year as a living artist. Kan left Byakkosha in 1981 to Launch and direct an international dance troupe called Katsura Kan & Saltimbanques. His own multinational Butoh company, The Saltimbanques, has featured dancers from North America, Europe, Israel, Australia, and Thailand as well as Japan. For the last ten years, Kan has organized numerous academic Butoh conferences in Kyoto and all over the world for the next generation of Butoh. Katsura Kan describes Butoh to be "based on the body as a costume and a Landscape which has the potential to recover, activate and revitalize humanity and the community."

Anastazia Louise is a multimedia artist, teacher, costume designer, and performer that offers a personally developed movement style that combines a lifetime of performance experience.  Anastazia is the founder and artistic director of Bad Unkl Sista, a performance art ensemble that combines choreography, original and improvised music, couture costuming, and physical theater elements to produce site-specific durational performances that seek to provoke and inspire – changing how witnesses relate to the performers, to the world, and to themselves. Her approach emphasizes creative and proactive human development within our present-day social context, foregrounding the pathways of transcribing and uniting outer and inner landscapes into a physical expression to reach all witnesses on a personal level.  For the past three decades, she has continued to evolve her characteristically unique fusion of performance and costuming while performing and teaching Butoh-based presence techniques and collaborating on large-scale art installations.

Anastazia Louise was introduced to Butoh by Diego Piñón in 2002, and his teachings remain an ongoing inspiration for her performance work.  Other influences include Hiroko and Koichi Tamano, Sankai Juku, and Vangeline.  Anastazia has also had the privilege of collaborating with internationally recognized artists including Flam Chen, Beats Antique, SORNE, ill.GATES, Human Nature Dance Company, Totter Todd, Soriah, Stellamara, Mizu Desierto, Nathan Montgomery (Syzygy Butoh), Richochet, The L.A. Stilt Circus, and VerbaBola. Since 2002, Anastazia has produced hundreds of performances for local, regional, and international promoters and festivals.  Notable works include “First Breath – Last Breath", an opera-scale production that spawned two audio recordings and a documentary short film titled “The Space Between".  Anastazia also choreographed and performed in "Little Match Girl Passion", an adaptation of David Lang's Pulitzer Prize-winning work performed in both San Francisco (U.S.) and Odense (Denmark).

Kota Yamazaki, born and raised in Niigata, Japan, was first introduced to Butoh under the teaching of Akira Kasai at Tenshi-kan at the age of 18.  Yamazaki graduated from Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo with a Bachelor of Arts in Fashion Design.  After his Butoh teacher Akira Kasai moved to Germany, Yamazaki continued his Butoh practice with Kunishi Kamiryo at Salamu-kan.  With an intention of expanding the field and possibilities of Butoh, Yamazaki started creating contemporary dance works in his 30’s with Tokyo-based dance company, rosy co.  With the invitation from Germain Acogny to create a dance piece in collaboration with her Senegal-based company Jant-bi, Yamazaki disbanded his Tokyo-based company, which he led from 1995-2001.  Since 2003, Yamazaki has been based in both New York and Tokyo, presenting dance works nationally and internationally.  From 2016-19, Yamazaki received artistic commissions from the Japan Contemporary Dance Network, New York Live Arts, and the Baryshnikov Arts Center in NY, to create a dance trilogy called the “Darkness Odyssey” that examined Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata’s dance of darkness and its relation to Gilles Deluze’s philosophies.  During those years, Yamazaki continued to teach around the world, and he is a current Teaching Faculty member at Bennington College in Vermont.  Yamazaki has also served as the Director of the Whenever Wherever Festival, a Tokyo-based cross-disciplinary experimental dance festival since 2009.

Kota Yamazaki has received numerous awards for his work including a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Dance and Performance Award (also known as the Bessie Award), Foundation for Contemporary Arts Grant Award (2013), and a 2016 New York Foundation for the Arts award for his work as founder and director of the FLUID HUG-HUG dance company, which integrates Butoh-based somatic practices, Japanese aesthetics, and Buddhist teachings such as “one equals many, many equals, one.”

Eugenia Vargas is a dancer, choreographer, teacher, curator, and artistic researcher from Mexico City.  She is the founder and director of Laboratorio Escénico Danza Teatro Ritual (LEDTR), a performance troupe and artistic venue that has served not only as an incubator for dance and interdisciplinary projects but also as an artistic residence and formative training space for Butoh in Mexico, from which several generations of artists have emerged or have been influenced.  Vargas is co-founder and director of Cuerpos en Revuelta: Festival Internacional de Danza Butoh, one of the premier Butoh festivals of Latin America.  She is also the founder of the Butoh México Archive with which she is currently organizing the ongoing Seminar “Thinking from the body with and against butoh.”  In 2022, Vargas organized “Encrucijada: mujeres en el butoh”, an initiative that brought together artists from Japan, Argentina, Chile and Mexico.

Eugenia Vargas has trained and studied with some of the most renowned Butoh teachers in the world including Japanese Butoh pioneer Natsu Nakajima and the late Yukio Waguri.  Vargas has co-produced and co-performed numerous choreographic productions with Nakajima and Waguri and with Tadashi Endo.  For nearly three decades, Vargas has performed in Japan, Mexico, Spain, Colombia, Peru, Chile and Canada, and she has also performed original works at important international butoh festivals such as the Women Defining Butoh Festival in New York City, the Dance Dance Dance Festival in Yokohama, Japan, and the Festival Internacional de Butoh Chile (FiButoh) in Santiago de Chile.  Her work has been recognized in many published books, including “Butoh: Cradling Empty Space” by Vangeline and “BUTOH AMERICA: Butoh Dance in the United States and Mexico from 1970 to the Early 2000s” by Tanya Calamoneri.

Sheri Brown is a performing artist and educator based in Seattle, Washington.  She is the Artistic Director of DAIPAN Butoh Collective and Co-Director of the Seattle International Butoh Festival.  With over 30 years of professional theater training, Sheri has studied with a wide range of Butoh master teachers including her most formative teachers: Katsura Kan, Diego Piñon, Joan Laage, and Yoshito Ohno in Japan, as well as with many stage theater artists of all types..

Since beginning her Butoh studies in the year 2000, Sheri has been invited to present a wide variety of Butoh artworks from theatrical stage performances to durational street performances in over a dozen cities throughout the United States, Mexico, Europe, Japan, South Korea, Thailand, and South America.  Sheri’s choreography and teaching draws from Butoh, Japanese Noh, mathematics, metaphysics, shamanism, and earth-body imagery: a well of deconstructed and regenerative roots that energize the soul and offer a portal for transformation.  Sheri considers her work as a Butoh teaching artist a profound honor and compelling challenge, inseparable from her work as an unfolding human being.

Tadashi Endo is a world-renowned Japanese Butoh dancer, choreographer and Butoh teacher based in Göttingen, Germany. Tadashi is the director of the Butoh-Centre MAMU and artistic director of the Butoh-Festivals MAMU Butoh & Jazz in Göttingen.  After his study as a theatre director at the famous Max-Reinhardt-Seminar in Vienna, he performed in collaboration with a wide variety of jazz musicians.  Tadashi Endo has also served as a guest artist at the Hochschule für Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main, Germany, The Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem, Israel, and at the Nucleo Interdisciplinar des Pesyuisas TeatrUnicamp, University Campinas, Brazil.  In 1989, Tadashi met and studied with Butoh master Kazuo Ohno and has since been deeply influenced by his work.

In 2008, Tadashi performed a special guest performance in the award-winning film Kirschblüten-Hanami (Cherry Blossoms) directed by renowned German filmmaker Doris Dörrie.  In 2009, Tadashi choreographed Georg Friedrich Händel's opera Admeto, directed by Doris Dörrie and performed at the Edinburgh International Festival in Scotland. As a choreographer, Tadashi has also collaborated with Doris Dörrie on the opera Madame Butterfly (Theater am Gärtnerplatz München 2006), the cinema film HANAMI-KIRSCHBLÜTEN (2007), and DON GIOVANNI (Hamburgische Staatsoper 2011, 2012). In all these productions, Tadashi Endo has also performed as a guest solo dancer. In his Butoh artistry, Tadashi strives to embody a synthesis of theatre, performance and dance, while also expressing the field of tension between ying and yang, male and female and their everlasting alteration.  In his Butoh workshops, Tadashi strives to not only teach students new forms to move but also tries to provide a deep view into Butoh philosophy.  

Yukio Suzuki, born 1972 in Shizuoka Japan, is a dancer and choreographer who represents Gen X Butoh and the Japanese contemporary dance scene.  In 1997, Yukio began studying Butoh and training in Butoh at the “Karada no Gakko” (School of the Body) of the the legendary Asbestos-kan, the original art studio of Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata.  Yukio Suzuki has trained with numerous Japanese master Butoh teachers including Moe Yamamoto, Akira Kasai, Koichi Tamano, and Akiko Motofuji. Yukio studied Butoh with Ko Murobushi for 10 years and danced in many of his performances as a member of his company, Ko & Edge Co.

In the year 2000, Yukio founded his own dance company "YUKIO SUZUKI projects" in order to more widely present activities as a choreographer, performer and director. In 2003 he won the ST Spot Lab Award. In 2004 he participated in the final Next-Next program of the Saison Foundation. In 2007 he was nominated for the Kyoto Arts Center Performing Arts Award 2007. His artworks have won several important awards in Japan, in 2008 his work “Confronting Silence” won the Grand prix at the Toyota Choreography Awards as well as the  “Next Age: Choreographer of the Next Generation” prize.

Yukio Suzuki has performed in more than 40 cities around the world, including visits to France, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Riga-Latvia, Sibiu-Romania, Singapore, United States, England and India.  In recent years he has expanded his activities as a choreographer with projects like choreographing pieces for dancers of the Tokyo City Ballet Company and participating in the Asian Dance Conference.  Yukio continues to teach and perform internationally while embodying a strong physicality and dance performance that is flexible, sensitive, and attractive to local audiences.  

divinebrick is a Latinx performance artist and self iconoclast in search for the sacred primordial being.  The name “divinebrick” is a placeholder for an idea that the self is a divine phenomenon holding and care taking the grander whole. Decolonizing the self is the remembering of the soil the self is made of. The name “josie j” is the further erasure of the colonized self accepted for autonomy.  

After their fine art studies, josie j trained extensively in Butoh with Koichi Tamano and Hiroko Tamano, both disciples of Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata.  While in San Francisco working with with the Tamanos, josie j also worked with Latino performance artist Guillermo Gomez-Pena, who works in a Psycho-Magic style.  josie j has also studied movement with Oguri located in Venice, California.  Oguri has served a greatly influential dancer in josie j’s style.  Gung Fu and Tai Chi practice are also foundational to josie j’s corporeal explorations. Josie j studied these Chinese ancient medicines with James Ibrao from 2013 until his passing in 2020. 

For more information about divinebrick/josie j’s artwork, workshops and performances visit: https://www.razethewhitebox.com/

Sara Zalek is a Chicago-based performer, interdisciplinary/transdisciplinary artist, event producer, and curator of artistic situations and curious objects.  Rooted in physical investigations of trauma, resilience, and transformation, their work is intimate, raw, poetic.  They make performances into learning situations and sensing environments to encourage thoughtful interpersonal connections.

Zalek performs often in both live and online situations; The City of Chicago named them an Esteemed Artist in 2022. Elastic Arts Foundation awarded them a Curatorial Grant in 2020 for Hot Mess: A hybrid performance event. They were a Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist in 2015 and a 2017 3Arts Make a Wave Awardee.  They have performed and curated performances at the Chicago Cultural Center, High Concept Labs, Elastic Arts, Experimental Sound Studio, Links Hall, Lumpen Radio, dfbrl8r, Urban Guild in Kyoto, Japan, and so many more.  For the past 20 years, Sara has studied Butoh and trained with numerous teachers including Yoshito Ohno, Yumiko Yoshioka, Tadashi Endo, Minako Seki, Yuko Kaseki, Mari Osanai, Natsu Nakajima, Koichi & Hiroko Tamano, Yukio Waguri, Ken Mai, Lori Ohtani, Yumi Umiumare, Diego Piñón, Atsushi Takenouchi, Ginger Krebs, Ayako Kato, and Michael Sakamoto.

Sara is the founder of Butoh Curious, a Chicago-based group that connects national and international teaching artists with Chicago art makers across genres in the independent and fringe arenas (including dance, butoh, physical theater, experimental and improvisational music). They create opportunities for positive communication and arts integration using workshops, performances, and conversations about personal and collective body. More info at: https://butohchicago.com/