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
Information and Registration
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.
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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
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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
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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.
Butoh Curious Chi 