Queer Butoh 2024

The shows will feature Vangeline Theater on June 26 + 27 in The Slowest Wave, featuring Vanegline, Maitlin Jordan and Mónica Cerda; and on June 28 + 29, Queer Butoh will feature Shuning Huang and Eilish Henderson in Garden of Ruins, Madelyn Sher and Erica Lee Schwartz in Dandelions, and Anástasis in Anima Transfiguratio.

About the Pieces

Originally a pioneering project combining butoh and neuroscience, The Slowest Wave by Vangeline explores the thematic of waves as a symbol of femininity and female sensuality. This piece was developed in 2022 and 2023 in collaboration with neuroscientists Sadye Paez, Constantina Theofanopoulou, and Jose ‘Pepe’ Contreras-Vidal, and composer Ray Sweeten. During a Gibney DIP Artist residency, Vangeline choreographed a 60-minute ensemble butoh piece uniquely informed by the protocol being established for a scientific pilot study researching the impact of butoh on brain activity.

Garden of Ruins is a work-in-progress butoh duet grounded in eco-somatics and lesbian intimacy as a perceptive, eternal, glistening web. Connected to systems of rebirth, two infinite bodies build, merge, float, and dissipate as they journey to an unspoken world and return to soil.

Dandelions is a butoh dance theater duet that emerges from the body of a seed. Birthed to the lineage of an anonymous microspecies, we consider our legacy in this highly anticipated and awkward moment of asexual transference.

Anima Transfiguratio by Anástasis: Changing shape, breath spirit gives raise to all beings. Life energy transforms throughout nature embodying animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, protozoa, minerals, elements, stars. This piece explores transfigurations of the vital breath that engenders all life.