SEATTLE INTERNATIONAL BUTOH FESTIVAL 2025
Friday 11/14
​Bios
Helen Thorsen has a BA in Dance from Columbia College. She began Butoh in 1981 with New York artists Eiko and Komo. In Chicago, Thorsen was Artistic Director of 627 Space and was also a founding member of Yuni Hoffman Dance Theater. After moving to Seattle, she began Butoh practice with Joan Laage dancing with her company Dappin’ Butoh for 11 years. With Mary Cutrera she co-founded LastLeg, which produced their choreography and aerial art. Thorsen now produces under helenthorsendances, The Brittle Sisters, and Butoh Tacoma. A founding member of DAIPANbutoh Collective, her dances have been seen in Seattle, Chicago, Portland, London and Chile. helenthorsendance.com
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After studying with masters Kazuo Ohno and Yoko Ashikawa in Tokyo in the late 80s and performing with Ashikawa’s group Gnome, Joan Laage/Kogut Butoh settled in Seattle and founded Dappin’ Butoh in 1990. Joan performed at the New York, Chicago, Portland, Boulder, Seattle, Salish Sea, Cancun, Amsterdam, Vienna and Paris butoh festivals. A Ph.D. in Dance & Related Arts from Texas Woman’s University, she is featured in Sondra Fraleigh’s books and in Tanya Calamoneri’s Butoh America. She directs site-specific work for Japanese gardens in Seattle annually and shares her art in Europe every year. Since living in Krakow 2004-2006, she has been known as Kogut (rooster). www.seattlebutoh-laage.com
Michael Shannon is a sound/recording artist, musician, photographer, and performer of experimental media, based in Seattle. He began performing in the punk clubs of San Francisco in the late 1970’s evolving performance and sound designs through various venues and media, specializing in the use of a variety of string instruments from Asia, percussion, sound objects, and electronics. In San Francisco, he began Joy Street Studios, the name for his sound art productions and his studio in 1983, to the present. Presently he’s a member of Seattle-based performing groups Gyre, Eye Music, Echore, Aono Jikken Ensemble, Animist Orchestra, Broken Mask (Bay Area).
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David Stanford is a Seattle-based musician, composer, and sound artist who plays with the graphic score group Eye Music and has worked on soundtracks. Originally from Massachusetts, he graduated from the Cornish College of the Arts and has also performed with other groups, including Gamelan Pacifica, Seattle City Gamelan, and the Animist Orchestra. His work often focuses on amplifying natural objects and prepared piano.​
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María Belén Espinosa Peña is an actress, performer of Butoh and Yoga teacher. She holds a degree in Performing Arts and has cultivated a multidisciplinary career that bridges theater, dance, circus and film. She trained in the Jacques Lecoq method at the International School of Gesture and Image La Mancha and explored Etienne Decroux’s Dramatic Corporeal Mime. She has studied with Atsushi Takenouchi, Minako Seki, Makiko Tominaga, Yumiko Yoshioka, Katsura Kan, Ken Mai, Tadashi Endo, Ko Murobushi and Rhea Volij. María Belén is a member of Ruta de la Memoria, directed by Natalia Cuéllar, with performances in Chile, Peru, Mexico and the USA. In 2016, under the artistic name Belén-Butoh, she founded her own company, Réquiem, dedicated to Dance-Theater. ​
Saturday 11/15
​Bios
Kaoru Okumura is a Japanese butoh performer based in Seattle. Her journey began in the 1970s, leading to training under Akiko Motofuji at Tokyo's historic Asbestos-Kan in 1993, where she made her debut. She has performed since 2008, including a project with Google Deep Dream, supported by Google Artists & Machine Intelligence. Her piece "Orasho - The Prayers of Nagasaki" was broadcast at Colombia's Festival Cuerpo Vibrátil in 2020. Recently, she performed at The 16th International Dance+Theater Festival 2024 in Tokyo. She conducts annual performance tours in Japan. (kaoruokumura.com)
Asako Tateishi is a Taiko, Japanese Flute, and Shamisen player, and Founder of Japan Creative Arts/The School of TAIKO. Based in Seattle since 2009, she provides music programs and leads the organization. Her Taiko performance experience includes performing as a resident group at EPCOT at Walt Disney World and various festivals across the U.S. Additionally, Asako has a unique background as a Motorsports Sportscaste, primarily at Suzuka Circuit, Japan. (www.japancreativearts.com)
Hiroko Nagatomo is a multidisciplinary artist working with ink, watercolor, and acrylics. Her practice explores the balance of color, texture, and form to express nature, emotion, and movement. She also designs stage art and scenography, integrating visual storytelling with spatial expression.
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Sheri Brown (Sheriyah) is a post-Western butoh dance artist and Seattle City Artist supported by the Office of Arts and Cultural Affairs. With a theatre degree from ASU and an M.Ed. from the University of Hawaii, she evolved from 18 years of street performance into Seattle’s butoh scene, training with Joan Laage and touring internationally with Katsura Kan before founding DAIPANbutoh Collective in 2010. Influenced by Kan, Diego Piñón, and Laage, her work explores spirituality, intuition, and embodied liberation through communal synthesis. She credits Raphael Laigo for inspiring deeper artistic inquiry into the field of Self.
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Stephanie Wood is an experimental sound artist, sound practitioner, and healing-justice-centered activist. She works with gongs, DIY sound sculptures, processed found objects and field recordings, integrating ambient soundscapes, silence and collective experience. Stephanie composes and performs with eclectic ensembles and teaches improvisation with gongs, electronics and found objects. She hosts the Seattle Avant‑Garde Music Society and co-hosts the NO CONCERT series at the Taoist Studies Institute with Shoko Zama. Instagram: @stephaniewoodbelovedsound (soundcloud.com)
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Natalia Cuéllar Díaz graduated in Theatrical Acting from Arcis University in 1998, she has trained in Butoh since 1993, mainly in Europe, with various masters such as Makiko Tominaga, Minako Seki, Itto Morita, and Katsura Kan. She founded the Mendicantes Theater Company in 1997, and directed La Procesión, a production recognized for its physical and street-theater style. In 2007, together with Leonel Cornejo and Raimundo Estay, she founded the Ruta de la Memoria Company, which she currently directs, where she combines Butoh with Dance and Physical Theater. She organizes and directs the International Butoh Festival in Chile, FIBUTOH, an event that, across four editions, has brought together renowned artists, choreographers, and performers from around the world including DAIPANbutoh Collective.​
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Friday 11/21
​Bios
Dhyana García is a nature-based mindful movement specialist, seasoned Butoh performer and creative collaborator. She is a Dance MFA graduate and former University of Washington dance and interdisciplinary arts faculty. As a co-founder of the DAIPANbutoh Collective and the Seattle Butoh Festival, Dhyana has over 27 years performing and teaching internationally. Originally from Mexico, her research explores dance and movement as healing practices. She teaches butoh, pilates, yoga and meditation. www.meditationinmotiontoday.com
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Atsushi Takenouchi, based in Europe since 2002 and presently living in Italy, began his Butoh journey in 1980 with the Hoppo-Butoh-ha company in Hokkaido. His final piece with the company, Takazashiki (1984), was created with the direct guidance of Tatsumi Hijikata. In 1986, he created his own path: Jinen Butoh — as a universal expression of nature, earth, and ancient memories, embracing the rhythms of life itself. From 1996 to 1999, he performed over 600 site-specific improvisations rooted in natural landscapes and sacred spaces in Japan where he learned the spirit of the universe of Kazuo Ohno and Yoshito Ohno. His presence extends into film, notably ‘Ridden by Nature’, an award-winning environmental art dance film by Kiah Keya. He continues to devote himself to transmitting Jinen Butoh through seasonal intensive workshops held both in nature and studio spaces — living his art as a continuous dialogue with life itself. In 2021, he published ‘Atsushi Takenouchi Jinen Butoh’ writing of his Butoh life, workshop contents and his Butoh performance works. www.jinen-butoh.com
Hiroko Komiya is a sound artist who transmutes the ephemeral – air, space, movement, bodily sensation, and memory – into boundless sonic expressions beyond conventional melody and rhythm. Since 1999, she has been the principal musical collaborator for Atsushi Takenouchi’s JINEN Butoh and has provided live accompaniment worldwide. Her artistic reach extends beyond Butoh, engaging in multidisciplinary collaborations with filmmakers, sculptors, painters, poets, costume designers, and performers for exhibitions and installations. In 2022, she performed an 11-hour tribute performance to Félix Guattari (French psychoanalyst and philosopher) in Paris, alongside Ramuntcho Matta’s art music collective and Atsushi Takenouchi. In 2021, she embarked on a new project with Chris H. Lynn, creating audiovisual performances with Butoh dancers, performed in Vienna, Warsaw, Barcelona, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Athens and Kumano, Japan. https://www.jinen-butoh.com/hiroko_profile_e.html
Chris H. Lynn is an American filmmaker and sound artist. His digital images and Super 8 films explore the subtle rhythms of movement, light, and sound in urban and rural landscapes that vary from the Eastern shores of Maryland to Nanjing, China. His work has been shown at the Librairie Avant-Garde, Nanjing, UNZALAB in Milan, American Film Institute (AFI) in Silver Spring, Md, Festival Internacional del Nuevo Cine Latinamericano Habana, Goethe Institut, Washington D.C., and The Anthology Film Archives, NYC. His work was featured in the book Cinema and the Audiovisual Imagination by Robert Robertson. He currently hosts the monthly program Beyond Encounters on Camp Radio. His sound works have been published on Impulsive Habitat, Verz Imprint, Green Field Recordings, Kandala Records, Plus Timbre and echOmusic and have appeared on radio programs worldwide. https://framingsounds.com/
Saturday 11/22
​Bios
Lin Lucas is a multidisciplinary artist, educator, and ancestral lineage healing practitioner tracing his own spiral path of discovery. He holds space for others at the crossroads where creativity, culture, and a passion for positive transformation occurs. Lin’s craft centers the reactivation of intuition and is an extension of his interest in Chan Buddhism and the Japanese performance art of butoh. His dance offerings are strongly influenced by his interest in and are rooted in the relationship of form and emptiness, and the dynamic relationship between bodies, space, and spirit. Lin has performed in Seattle, Portland, Chicago, Berlin, and Kyushu, Japan and has performed and directed butoh works with FUNHOUSE movement theater in Tuscon since 2018.
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Susana DuMett weaves the ethereal and the primal through the nuanced power of her voice. She often collaborates with Butoh dancers, theater and performance artists, aerial performers, and experimental musicians to create immersive, emotionally evocative soundscapes. Her work explores the voice as a channel for ritual, storytelling, and transformation. In a time when many have been taught or pressured to quiet their truth, Susana also guides people to reclaim and awaken their authentic voice as a channel for emotional release, grounded presence, and personal evolution. www.voxvespertinus.com
Eric Maia (celadon) has been performing experimental music under the name celadon
since 2003. Eric creates industrial, ambient, and experimental music and works solo and in collaboration with other musicians. Since 2006, he has improvised and composed for Butoh dance and other art forms, working with Vanessa Skantze, Joan Laage and other local dancers. Eric has also composed music for The Cabiri, an aerial performance troupe bringing ancient myth and legend to life. His music, including music from Cabiri shows, can be found at celadonmusic.bandcamp.com
A lover of the deep listening practice of improvised music, Vanessa Skantze began performing as a movement artist with the Death Posture in New Orleans in 2001. This approach is a wellspring of both her Butoh and sound performances. Her musical collaborators include Peter Kowald, Jarboe, Tatsuya Nakatani, and To End It All. A student of Atsushi Takenouchi, Mari Osanai, Natsu Nakajima, Seisaku, Saga Kobayashi and Yuko Kaseki, she has created Butoh works and taught yoga and movement for over 20 years. Her film collaborations have won awards at national festivals. Based in Seattle, she is co-founder of Teatro de la Psychomachia, a DIY space hosting international performing artists since 2010.
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Atsushi Takenouchi, based in Europe since 2002 and presently living in Italy, began his Butoh journey in 1980 with the Hoppo-Butoh-ha company in Hokkaido. His final piece with the company, Takazashiki (1984), was created with the direct guidance of Tatsumi Hijikata. In 1986, he created his own path: Jinen Butoh — as a universal expression of nature, earth, and ancient memories, embracing the rhythms of life itself. From 1996 to 1999, he performed over 600 site-specific improvisations rooted in natural landscapes and sacred spaces in Japan where he learned the spirit of the universe of Kazuo Ohno and Yoshito Ohno. His presence extends into film, notably ‘Ridden by Nature’, an award-winning environmental art dance film by Kiah Keya. He continues to devote himself to transmitting Jinen Butoh through seasonal intensive workshops held both in nature and studio spaces — living his art as a continuous dialogue with life itself. In 2021, he published ‘Atsushi Takenouchi Jinen Butoh’ writing of his Butoh life, workshop contents and his Butoh performance works. www.jinen-butoh.com
Hiroko Komiya is a sound artist who transmutes the ephemeral – air, space, movement, bodily sensation, and memory – into boundless sonic expressions beyond conventional melody and rhythm. Since 1999, she has been the principal musical collaborator for Atsushi Takenouchi’s JINEN Butoh and has provided live accompaniment worldwide. Her artistic reach extends beyond Butoh, engaging in multidisciplinary collaborations with filmmakers, sculptors, painters, poets, costume designers, and performers for exhibitions and installations. In 2022, she performed an 11-hour tribute performance to Félix Guattari (French psychoanalyst and philosopher) in Paris, alongside Ramuntcho Matta’s art music collective and Atsushi Takenouchi. In 2021, she embarked on a new project with Chris H. Lynn, creating audiovisual performances with Butoh dancers, performed in Vienna, Warsaw, Barcelona, Mexico City, Hong Kong, Athens and Kumano, Japan. www.jinen-butoh.com/hiroko_profile_e.html
Sunday 11/23
​Bios
Alycia Scott Zollinger is a psychosomatic healing facilitator, dancer, and educator. She is a graduate of the Seattle School of Body-Psychotherapy, a Movement Integration Specialist with a MA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and a designated Master Therapist and Mentor with the International Somatic Movement, Education and Therapy Association. Since 2006, Alycia has trained with master artists from Diego Piñón and Natsu Nakajima, to Sifu Jerry Gardner and Sankai Juku.
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