Embodying the Spirit
Butoh & Nature Workshops with Joan Laage/Kogut Butoh
Wed & Thurs March 11-12, 2026
The Checkout, 4116 N Clark St
6-10PM

Earth Tomes
ONE NIGHT ONLY
Sunday, March 15, 2026
Hairpin Arts Center, 2810 N Milwaukee Ave, 2nd FL
Doors 7pm, performance 7:30pm

A birth, in which she enters as a tree and emerges as a body turned to earth.

This iteration is co-directed by Joan/Kogut and Sharkey Zalek. Featuring twelve extraordinary butoh dancers: Cristal Sabbagh, Wannapa Pimtong-Eubanks, Aja Singletary, Helen Lee, Joan Gutiérrez, Corin Wiggins, Keiko Johnson, Elaine Lemieux, Aurora Tabar, Harlan Rosen, Sharkey Zalek, and Joan/Kogut.

Live soundscape by Norman W. Long
Composed music by Lee Berwick

Earth Tomes exists to bring people together to celebrate dance, to celebrate our bodies, our relationships to each other, and our relationship to the Earth. The desire is to ignite a passion for these relationships in the audience. Butoh, in its essential nature, is an enigmatic dance form that highlights the body clinging to life. “When one considers the body in relation to dance, it is then that one truly realizes what suffering is: it is a part of our lives. No matter how much we search for it from the outside there is no way we can find it without delving into ourselves.” exclaimed Tatsumi Hijikata in the 1970s. If anything, we have collectively grown more aware of this human condition in these days, and Butoh dancers have now had many years of experience to model this integration.

Earth Tomes was born in 1993 in the middle of the night in an outhouse at a backcountry camp on snowy Mt. Rainier, Washington, while Joan sat listening to the sounds of nature and watching the shadows cast by her flashlight. For her the piece is political, to remind us to remain connected to the earth. Initially a solo work, Earth Tomes became a project as Laage began inviting other dancers to join her. Since 2016, the project has been presented with local dancers in Seattle, Upstate New York, London, Liverpool, Oslo, Warsaw, Freiburg (Germany), and Pontedera (Italy) and will be presented at the University of Colorado (Boulder) just prior to Chicago. It has become a community-based creative process and continues to evolve as it travels. It is truly a collaborative project, working with local performers and drawing them into the creative process.

Earth Tomes relates back to Laage’s roots in rural Wisconsin. She swam in the creeks in the summer, made igloos in the winter, traipsed through fields of cow patties, and tended a garden with her family. She likens her early experiences in life to her current gardening practice (and profession) and planting seeds that sprout later in life.

She says that when she began exploring butoh, it reconnected her with her upbringing: “I felt like I was recovering my childhood, that body that was really my body . . . When I heard Goda Nario talk about Hijikata’s one tatami mat dance and the children kept in a basket, whether or not it’s true, it says something about the importance of one’s childhood experience of space.”
( Joan Laage, pers. comm., January 6, 2020)

March 11-12, 2026
Embodying the Spirit
Butoh & Nature workshops facilitated by Joan/Kogut
Discount for Early Birds until March 1, use EARLY to get 15% off*

The Checkout, 4116 N Clark St, Chicago.
Wed & Thurs March 11-12, 2026
6-10PM

Embodying the Spirit explores endless questions: What is life? What is the human condition? What is the body? In this age of an increasing use of technology to direct and control so many aspects of our daily lives, a disconnect to nature can easily result. Earth Tomes is a welcome revelation of the body as earth and, through continual transformation, reveals the changing landscape of the body. Images of earth, trees, roots, stones will be layered with explorations of the elemental body (water, wind, etc.) and animals as we celebrate the body as nature.

In this two day workshop we will focus on imagery from the Earth Tomes Project. Partner work will facilitate participants’ individual and collective journeys. The workshop draws from Joan’s training and research with many butoh masters and her background as a Tai Chi practitioner and professional gardener.

This is a process of erasing and recreating the body through guided improvisation inspired by nature imagery. Experience training methods towards a supple body and mind and investigate aesthetics common to butoh through creative explorations. All are welcome, and no previous experience is required. The Checkout is wheelchair accessible; we encourage all curious bodies.

About Joan Laage. After studying with Butoh masters Kazuo Ohno and Yoko Ashikawa in Tokyo in the late 80s and performing with Ashikawa’s group Gnome, Joan Laage settled in Seattle and founded Dappin’ Butoh in 1990, which she directed until 2001. She is a co-founder of DAIPANbutoh Collective, which produces an annual Butoh festival. Joan performed at the Santiago, New York, Chicago, Portland, Boulder, Seattle, Amsterdam, Warsaw, and Paris Butoh festivals, and a Butoh symposium at the University of California (LA). A Ph.D. in Dance & Related Arts from Texas Woman’s University, who wrote on the significance of the body in Butoh, and a Certified Movement Analyst, she is featured in Sondra Fraleigh’s books – Dancing into Darkness: Butoh, Zen, and Japan and Butoh: Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy. Joan is also featured in Butoh America written by Tanya Calamoneri, released in August 2021, and is quoted in Vangeline’s recent publication, Butoh: Cradling Empty Space. She creates site-specific work for Seattle Japanese gardens annually and tours every winter/spring in Europe where she teaches and performs and continues studying under Atsushi Takenouchi. She is an avid Tai Chi practitioner with a background in traditional Asian dance/theater and a professional gardener. Since living in Krakow from 2004–2006, she has been known as Kogut (rooster). https://seattlebutoh-laage.com/

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FROM THE Way Back Machine—February 2025

Embodying the Spirit: the body finds its way
Butoh Dance & Nature Workshops taught by Joan Laage/Kogut Butoh
Thursday, Feb 20 8-10pm @Visceral Dance 3121 N Rockwell St
Friday, Feb 21 6-9:30pm @Movement on Montrose 2951 W Montrose Ave, Chicago
Sunday, Feb 23 11am-2:30pm @Movement on Montrose 2951 W Montrose Ave, Chicago

This workshop is a process of erasing and re-creating the body through guided improvisation inspired by nature imagery. Experience training methods towards a supple body and mind and investigate aesthetics common to butoh through creative explorations. 

Embodying the Spirit explores endless questions: What is life? What is the human condition? What is the body? In this workshop we will focus on imagery from the Earth Tomes Project, which has been performed in collaboration with local performers in the US and in Europe.

In this age of an increasing use of technology to direct and control so many aspects of our daily lives, a disconnect to nature can easily result. Earth Tomes is a welcome revelation of the body as earth and, through continual transformation, reveals the changing landscape of the body. Images of earth, trees, roots, stones will be layered with explorations of the elemental body (water, wind, etc.) and animals as we celebrate the body as nature.

Partner work will facilitate participants’ individual and collective journeys. The workshop draws from Joan’s training with butoh masters and her background as a Tai Chi practitioner and professional gardener.

Saturday, Feb 22, 2025 2-4:30pm
Artist Talk with Joan Laage, PhD
Heritage Museum of Asian Art, 3500 S Morgan St 3rd Fl, Chicago, IL 60609
Joan Laage presents her work, followed by Community Discussion

February 23, 7:30pm
ONE NIGHT ONLY
Piercing Heart
Asian Improv aRts Midwest, 4875 N Elston Ave, Chicago, IL 60630
Solo performance created by Joan Laage/Kogut Butoh
Commissioned music by Bill Horist


So many thoughts and desires pierce our consciousness, our hearts, sometimes settling, other times escaping through the fleeting air. Where do we find our freedom and peace? In confinement or total abandonment? Piercing Heart was performed twice with live music by Bill Horist at Shimmer: Seattle Summer Butoh Festival and at the Chapel venue in Seattle in 2023 and at an experimental music festival in Vienna with musicians Florian Feit and Christoph Punzmann the same year.

Joan Laage, her head flopped face first in a dozen red roses atop a black square table, low to the ground, as she is seated in front of it, in a darkened blank space. Her hair is brown, clothed in black with red shoes peeking out from under the table.

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 and Warsaw Butoh Festival in 2024. Brought by Vangeline, Joan presented her solo Rivers Running Red in New York City. Her work has been presented in Chicago by Nicole Legette. She 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. Since living in Krakow 2004–2006, she has been known as Kogut (rooster). http://www.seattlebutoh-laage.com

Produced by Sara Zalek, in partnerships with Rika Lin, Ji Yang, and Joan Laage.