Butoh Workshop with Joan Laage // Alan Sutherland // Sheri Brown
Butoh Workshop with Joan Laage // Alan Sutherland // Sheri Brown
We are sorry to say we are cancelling this event and will be refunding all workshop registrations. We are committed to prioritizing the health of our artists, staff, volunteers, faculty, students, and all of our community members.
We will reschedule this event in the future!
March 15th, 10am - 1pm CANCELLED
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Before registering for a workshop, please review the sliding scale economic justice information below the artist descriptions, as well as both of these forms: WITD INCLUSIVITY & ACCESSIBILITY STATEMENT & WITD LIABILITY WAIVER
Joan Laage // Alan Sutherland // Sheri Brown
3-hour butoh workshop, 10am - 1pm
Please join us for a 3-hour workshop with three brilliant Seattle butoh artists.
This workshop is a process of erasing and re-creating the body through guided improvisation largely inspired by nature imagery. Experience training methods towards a supple body and mind and investigate aesthetics common to butoh through creative explorations. Together we will explore 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. In this workshop we will explore mythological and Chinese zodiac animal signs through working with the material and energetic body and nature elements (water, air, etc.). Partner work will facilitate participants’ individual and collective journeys. The workshop draws from Joan’s training with Butoh Masters Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno and Yoko Ashikawa in Tokyo and more recently with Atsushi Takenouchi and her background as a Tai Chi practitioner and professional gardener, as well as support from long-time collaborators Sheri Brown and Alan Sutherland.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTORS
Joan Laage
Joan Laage (Kogut) studied under butoh masters Kazuo Ohno and Yoko Ashikawa and performed with Ashikawa’s group Gnome in Japan in the late 80s. After settling in Seattle in 1990, she formed Dappin’ Butoh, a company known for its appearances in Seattle’s fringe theater and dance festivals. Joan has performed and taught at national and international butoh and dance festivals, and was a featured artist at the UCLA Butoh Symposium in May 2011, and has been an adjunct faculty at Cornish College of The Arts (Seattle). She is featured in Dancing Into Darkness: Butoh, Zen, And Japan and Butoh: Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy by Sondra Horton Fraleigh. She performs frequently at the Seattle Japanese Garden where she is a docent. Joan is a founding member of DAIPANbutoh Collective which produces an annual butoh festival in Seattle.
Alan Sutherland
Alan Sutherland first experienced Butoh in 1991 while attending Dappin Butoh shows to support his friend Helen Thorsen who was a founding member of that troupe. His first performance was in 1996 when he was 42,after studying with Hel. He first met Sheri when she came to classes he was leading in 2000. Since then they've performed together in Korea and Japan and San Francisco and seemingly every single theater in Seattle.
Sheri Brown
Sheri Brown, Artistic Director of DAIPANbutoh Collective, began dancing butoh 20 years ago when she saw Alan Sutherland and a few other soul- engaging butoh artists perform in the Seattle Butoh Festival that Joan Laage/Dappin' Butoh put on at On the Boards. She is deeply grateful to have since developed not only a deep relationship to these two key individuals in the butoh world, but also the larger, uniquely special community of butoh dancers locally, nationally and globally through her intense and continued two decades of engagement with the butoh dance-theater art form.
For pricing we are inspired to use this model by Worts and Cunning. Please follow this link for credit and in-depth information on how it works.
The Sliding Scale: A Tool of Economic Justice
The sliding scale is a tool that allows for the services of our teachers to be obtained at multiple price points based on the circumstances of the purchaser. We believe that teachers deserve to get paid and students deserve classes which recognize the multiple realities of economic access and privilege that exist. Please refer to this graphic and do your best to truthfully select at the price point that most accurately fits your economic reality. There are a limited amount of slots for the two lower price points at the end of the scale. Please be mindful that if you register at the lowest end of the scale when you can truthfully afford a higher registration price, you are limiting access to those who truly need the gift of financial flexibility.
