Some of our past and present teachers and affiliates include:

DIEGO PIÑÓN (Mexico)

Diego Piñón first encountered butoh while dancing professionally in Europe in the early 80’s.  As a trained modern dancer and student of Mexico’s energetic movement and ritual theatre, he immediately recognized the power and potential of the art form.  Making it the foundation of his work, he studied with such renowned masters as Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno, Natsu Nakajima and Min Tanaka.  In addition to his work in Japan, which has included collaborations with Ohno and Tanaka, Diego has established himself as a leading teacher, solo artist and director in the U.S., Europe and Mexico.  In 2002, Piñón founded The Butoh Ritual Mexicano Dance Center in Tlalpujahua, Mexico, where he continues his wrok integrating butoh with other contemporary movement techniques.

YUMIKO YOSHIOKA (Berlin/Japan)

Yumiko Yoshioka studied and performed with Butoh’s founders Hijikata and Ohno, and was both an original member of Ariaadine, Japan’s first female butoh company, and a participant in the first performance of butoh outside of Japan in Paris 1978.  Using the cultural “fricition” between East and West as a creative engine for her work, Yumiko became a leader of the burgeioning European butoh scene, ultimately settling in Berlin, Germany in 1988.  Ms. Yoshioka is currenly a resident artist at the internationally renowned Scholss Broellin (Castle of Broellin) theater research center.  As both performer and choreographer, Yumiko’s work explores the possibility of metamorphosis and transformation in performance by activating primal memory through physical movement.

KOICHI AND HIROKO TAMANO (San Francisco/Japan)

Internationally touring artists of Butoh & Harupin-Ha creators Koichi & Hiroko Tamano were dancers in the first company of Tatsumi Hijikata (the founder of Butoh).  They have been performing and teaching Butoh for over 30 years and are noted for bringing the dance form to the west.  The influence of Butoh originator Tatsumi Hijikata, who performed with and shaped the two artists, has left its imprint on them though the Tamanos have since veered into their own trajectory.  Koichi Tamano, who was the principal dancer of Hijikata’s company, was named by him “the bow-legged Nijinsky” and has been given the status of Japanese National Treasure.

NATSU NAKAJIMA (Japan)

Natsu Nakajima has been a primal force in Butoh since the 1960’s.  Much scholarship has celebrated her work in the cultivation of the feminine/feminist and spiritual/shaman. In 1969, she founded the company Muteki-Sha, whose work has been seen and celebrated throughout the globe.  Simultaneously, Nakajima helped to bring Butoh off the stage, to diverse populations– of elderly, children, and people with disabilities.  Her community-dance approach encourages everyone to enjoy the expressive play and physical-mental-spiritual benefits from working with the body, paired with the imagination.  Ms. Nakajima studied directly with both Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata, progenitors of the expressionist and ritualistic dance form. Much scholarship has lauded Nakajima for her inherently refined style and success in universalizing the personal through the intimate and cyclic confrontations found in butoh.  Nakajima has said, “It is not art that I aspire to, but love.” It is a rare honor to have Ms. Nakajima visit and share in the United States and here, in Portland.

LAURENCE  KOMINZ (Portland)

Professor Kominz, Director of PSU’s Center for Japanese Studies, brings the joy of Japanese performing arts to students and audiences alike. He is a scholar & performer of nihon buyô and kyôgen, and directs student productions of kyôgen and kabuki. His writings on the Japanese Theatre have been published extensively.  Kominz has been artistic director or assistant of summer Japanese performance festivals at PSU almost every summer since 1992. Kominz currently serves as Japan editor for Asian Theatre Journal and as a member of the Japan Society of New York’s performing arts advisory committee.  Kyogen Theatre is a medieval Japanese Farce.

MIZU DESIERTO (Portland)

Mizu is the founder and Artistic Director of Portland’s Water in the Desert: Festival of Art, Ritual, Performance, & Ecology.  She has been a collaborator, dancer, choreographer and costume designer with Human Nature Dance Theatre (AZ) for over a decade and was a founding member of the Carpetbag Brigade Physical Theatre Company (S.F.).  She has performed with Harupin-Ha Butoh Theatre (S.F.), Yoshito & Kazuo Ohno (Japan), & Diego Pinon (Mexico); and her solo & collaborative projects have been showcased in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, Phoenix, Tucson, Portland, Boulder, Tokyo, Mexico, France & Spain.  She has been a recipient of project grants from the Arizona Commission on the Arts, Oregon’s Regional Arts & Culture Council, The Multnomah County Cultural Coalition, Oregon Cultural Trust, and The Northwest Regional Burning Man Council; and has sat on the Arizona Commission on the Arts panel to award grants in the category of Dance.   As an educator, she has been teaching workshops throughout the west coast throughout the past decade.  In 2008 she served as adjunct faculty at Prescott College (Arizona), leading a course in Butoh-Ritual dance.

LITA BATHO

Lita moved to Portland, Oregon in 2001 after six years of intensive study, including living and teaching at the Omega Institute in New York, completing a year-long teacher training with at Samadhi Yoga in Seattle, and studying with several senior teachers.  Since arriving in Portland she has been a full time yoga teacher, and has continued her development as a yoga practitioner and teacher through the Shadow Yoga School, founded by Zhander Remete.

MIRIAM BURKE

Miriam is a performance artist exploring the spaces between: where music becomes movement, where tradition morphs into contemporary, where the subconscious is expressed through the raw impulse of creation.   These transitory cracks, bridging and facilitating change, provide the impetus and data which push and inform her as an artist. Her work is informed by 10 years of training in modern and post-modern dance and circus and aerial arts, over two decades of playing a wide variety of instruments and genres of music, and the myriad inspirations and catalytic moments of life

MICHELLE FUJII

Michelle was awarded the prestigious Bunka-cho fellowship from the Japanese government in 2001 to study with Japan’s foremost traditional folk dance troupe, Warabiza, where she studied under the tutelage of master dancer/choreographer Shohei Kikuchi.  Currently Fujii serves as Artistic Director of Portland Taiko, and is known for her innovative fusion of taiko and dance. She has played with numerous taiko groups including TAIKOPROJECT, On Ensemble, San Jose Taiko and is a member of the North American Taiko Conference Advisory Board.

TORU WATANABE

Toru is a renowned folk dance artist and performer who began performing and choreographing in college for Yossakoi Team.  In 2001, Watanabe became a performing member of Warabi-za, one of Japan’s foremost folk-dance performing groups located in the Northern prefecture of Akita. He has appeared in four original musical productions and has taught within Warabiza’s in-house residency program for youth. Currently Watanabe works for Portland Taiko as artistic staff.

DOUGLAS RIDINGS

Douglas has performed with Dappin’ Butoh, PAN, and Katsura Kan(butoh), The Samadhi Yoginis (yoga- inspired dance), Locust(contemporary dance), Implied Violence(theater), and Urvasi (Classical Indian Dance under the direction of Dr. Ratna Roy). He has danced extensively in Seattle, Portland, San Francisco and also in Madrid, Spain (with Katsura Kan). In November,he will assist and perform with Katsura Kan at the Naropa institute in Colorado. Performances in India, Greece, Spain, and Italy are being planned for 2010. He is also a teacher of yoga and dance.

SHERI BROWN

Sheri  is a Seattle-based performer (www.sheribrown.com) who found butoh in Seattle eight years ago, after 11years of theatre and street performance. Butoh satisfied her need to explore and express the place between words and dance inside her connection to her innermost self, the world, and the universe.  She began serious study in San Francisco with Shinichi Momo Komo and has trained with numerous butoh masters since then including Katsura Kan, Diego Pinon, Akira Kasai, Minako Seki, Su-En, Joan Laage, and Jay Hirobashi.  With her troupe, the P.A.N.(www.prettyartnumb.com), she has presented work in the International Butoh Festival in San Francisco, the Overseas Arts Convention in Korea, and International Mime Festival in Korea (where they won the Dokkebi Award) and toured Japan twice.

CHRISTINA BRAUN

Dance artist Christina Braun’s collaborations with composers have been presented regularly since 2002, including the Thailand International Butoh Festival “New Generations” 2006, and the West Wave Dance Festival “World Forms” 2007.  Christina has performed with Koichi & Hiroko Tamano’s Harupin-Ha since 1998, and Mary Sano and her Duncan Dancers since 1997.  Christina enjoyed choreographing the 2007 Woman’s Will production of Mac Wellman’s play Antigone.  In 2008, Christina co-founded BUTOH San Francisco to foster the growth of the Bay Area Butoh artist and audience communities.  SF Butoh LAB is Christina’s project, whose mission is to promote peace through art exchange by producing new dance performances, symposia and workshops.  In her creativity and performance trainings, Christina gratefully acknowledges the direct sourcing of specific exercises and concepts.  Influential master teachers include Akiko Motofuji, Anzu Furukawa, Hiroko & Koichi Tamano, Katsura Kan,  Yoshito & Kazuo Ohno, and Akira Kasai.

CYDNEY WILKES

Wilkes’ dance work encompasses site-influenced, indoors and out, as well as traditional presentations.  Her choreographic history has covered two decades in New York City’s downtown dance scene and seven years in Portland.  She is the recipient of two NY Dance and Performance Awards (Bessies) as well as regional fundings, commissions and artist residencies.

SHAKINA NAYFACK

Shakina Nayfack is a theatre director, performance artist, and a shotgun scholar. He is Artistic Director and Co-Founder of Epic Megalopolis Productions (EpicMegaPro), and holds a PhD  in Critical Dance Studies and an MFA in Experimental Choreograpy, both from UC Riverside. His writings on performance have been published by Dance Research Journal, The Drama Review, and most recently by the University of Illinois Press in the anthology Dancing Across Borders.  A student of Diego Piñón, Shakina teaches and performs from a foundation in Butoh Ritual Mexicano.

NATHAN MONTGOMERY

Nathan teaches and performs throughout the United States.  He works in collaboration with such groups as Human Nature in Arizona and the Carpetbag Brigade of San Francisco.  He co-created TinHouse Experimental Dance Theatre in Boulder, Colorado and continues to base his productions there.  In classic proscenium, on mountaintop or in the town junkyard, Syzygy performs in diverse venues and settings.  For Nathan, while the work is originally connected to the seed of Japanexe Butoh, Syzygy grows as an American Butoh.

NICOLE LEGETTE

Nicole LeGette is a maverick of Chicago’s dance and performance art scene, being the only local artist dedicated to performing, presenting, and teaching butoh. Blushing Poppy Productions was created to encompass these endeavors. Nicole has trained with master butoh artists in Japan, Mexico, Canada, and across the US; and has presented several of these artists in Chicago. Ms. LeGette was awarded the prestigious Chicago Dancemakers Forum grant in 2007-2008 to pursue Landscapes Of Uncertainty, a comprehensive project investigating butoh dance technique and application for people with vision impairment.