Photo credit: Katarina Wolf
Embodying the Spirit: The body finds its way. Taught by Joan Laage/Kogut Butoh (Seattle, WA)
Workshop Dates/Times:
Friday Feb 28th: 6-9pm
Sat March 1st 12-4pm and Sunday March 2nd: 12-5pm
Location Joe Goode Annex 401 Alabama St, San Francisco
Purchase Tickets HERE or button above.
Work Exchange and BIPOC scholarships available contact organizer: butohcontact@gmail.com for more info
This workshop is a process of erasing and re-creating the body through guided improvisation inspired by nature imagery and Ukiyoe prints.
Experience training methods towards a supple body and mind and investigate aesthetics common to butoh through creative explorations. ETS explores endless questions: What is life? What is the human condition? What is the body? The workshop structure includes explorations of physical, “natural”, and transforming bodies. Partner work will facilitate participants’ individual and collective journeys. In this workshop we will focus on the elemental body and work with famous Japanese Ukiyoe wood block prints to create movement sequences inspired by Joan’s time with Gnome, Yoko Ashikawa’s company. The workshop draws from Joan’s training with the Ohnos and Ashikawa in Tokyo, Atsushi Takenouchi in Europe and her background as a Tai Chi practitioner and professional gardener.
About Joan Laage:
Residing in Seattle WA for many years, Joan/Kogut is known as the Northwest butoh pioneer. She is one of the few non-Japanese to study with and dance under Yoko Ashikawa in her Tokyo-based group Gnome in the late 80s. She also studied with Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno. Joan has performed and taught at many festivals including the first New York butoh festival, Seattle and Salish Sea Butoh Festivals, Vienna’s Hybrid Butoh Festival, Butoh Festival (Tenri) and En Chair et En Son Acousmatic Festival in Paris, and at the Amsterdam Butoh Festival in 2024. Joan was invited by Vangeline to present her solo Rivers Running Red in New York City. Joan wrote a dissertation on the butoh body and is featured in Tanya Calamoneri’s Butoh America. Joan directs an annual site-specific event in the Seattle’s Japanese gardens. She is pleased to return to the Bay Area, having recently performed at the San Francisco Zen Center, and having had two earlier periods as a contemporary dancer at Margie Jenkins/ODC and at Mills College. Since living in Krakow 2004–2006, she has been known as Kogut (rooster). www.seattlebutoh-laage.com
photos: 1, 2 David Jennings; 3: Lori Farr; 4: Briana Jones