Panel Discussion: Women, Latin America, and Butoh
With Dr. Alice Baldock (Oxford University), Raquel Almazan, Natalia Cuellar, Eugenia Vargas and Vangeline.
Since butoh's conception, women have been the intellectual and artistic force behind its co-creation. This is especially true of butoh in Latin America. Here, dancers such as Natalia and Eugenia are leading a transnational network of mainly women butoh dancers, whose works speak to audiences across Latin America and the world. Join them to discuss the previously obscured histories of women in butoh and their importance, as well as the contemporary moment in which butoh is being shaped by a new generation of women.
SPEAKERS
Dr Alice Baldock (she/her) is the Nissan Institute as the Okinaga Junior Research Fellow in Japanese Studies at Wadham College, University of Oxford. Her research interests include 20th century Japanese history, gender in postwar Japan and the transnational circulation of ideas around ‘the body’, particularly in the development of butoh dance. Her current research involves tracing the and the transnational circulation and reception of this body of knowledge, to see how and why these ideas about the body - that involved a complete eradication of hierarchies of gender, ability, and class, became so popular in Japan and then across the world.
Her recent publications include ‘Body (of) Knowledge: Women, the Body, and Dance in Twentieth Century Japan’ (Journal of Asian Studies, January 2022), ‘Selling Bodies in the Age of the Flesh: Bodies, Dance, and Postwar Japan’ (Histories of Sex Work Around the World, 2024), and the foreword to dancer Vangeline’s first book, Cradling Empty Space (2020). Alice also has a creative practice, with recent work including an appearance in Nakajima Natsu’s Yume no yume, oku no oku, nokori no hi (April 2022) and a solo piece in butoh company Mutekisha’s Kokkyounaki Karada (July 2022). She is also interested in integrating performing arts and humanities into a useful dialogue, most recently by co-organising the international conference ‘Missing Bodies, Missing Voices: Ordinary Lives and the Reframing of Postwar Japan’ at St Antony’s College, Oxford (March 2023), which brought scholars, practitioners, and scholar-practitioners from around the world into conversation.
Natalia Cuellar is an internationally renowned actress, dancer, choreographer, and director of the Ruta de la Memoria Company and the International Butoh Festival in Chile, Fibutoh. She graduated with a BA in Theater Acting in 1998, specializing in corporeality through Balinese dances in Indonesia and Physical Theater in Hungary and Switzerland. She has been studying Butoh since 1990. Her main teacher is Makiko Tominaga. She worked with Minako Seki in Frankfurt for two years, later he returned to Chile to create her company with twenty years of experience. Her works have been presented in Chile, Mexico, Argentina, the United States, Sweden, Peru, and Uruguay.
Eugenia Vargas. Dancer, choreographer, teacher, manager, and researcher from Mexico. Her education integrates choreography, dance research, and literary creation. Her artistic interest is based on the question about the body, butoh, and the composition of the poetic image on stage. In her workshops, Vargas focuses on the investigation of the electrical impulse as a spark of sensation to delve into the training of nervous sensitivity and transformation body, based on energy and its multiple qualities.
She is the founder and director of Laboratorio Escénico Danza Teatro Ritual (LEDTR), a space that has served not only as an incubator for dance and interdisciplinary projects but also as an artistic residence and a formative space for butoh dance, from which several generations of artists have emerged or have been influenced.
She is co-founder and director of Cuerpos en Revuelta - Butoh International Festival -, of the Seminar “Thinking from the body with and against butoh”, among several other initiatives focused on the practice and study of butoh. She is a relevant figure in the promotion of butoh in Mexico.
Vargas has trained with some of the most recognized butoh dance teachers in Mexico, Japan, and Germany, performing choreographic productions of Natsu Nakajima, Tadashi Endo, and Yukio Waguri. She has directed choreographic projects at a national and international level and has participated in festivals and stages in various countries, being recognized for her work in specialized books on butoh. She has recently been selected as one of the resident artists at B.I.G (Butoh International Gathering) which will be held in Germany next August. She has received support from the National System of Art Creators in Mexico.
Raquel Almazan was born in Madrid – Spain, is also of Costa Rican descent and has lived most of her life in the U.S. As an interdisciplinary artist she holds an M.F.A. in Playwriting from Columbia University. B.F.A. in Theatre from University of Florida/New World School of the Arts Conservatory. She develops work as a writer, director, actor, dramaturge and is also a Butoh dance practitioner. Almazan is the Artistic Director of LA LUCHA ARTS, producing several of her original works, including LATIN IS AMERICA play cycle and lecture-performance, a collection of bi-lingual works in dedication to Latin American countries. Select play credits include: La Paloma Prisoner Arthur J. Harris Social Justice Prize/Arch and Bruce Brown LGBTQ Prize – workshop: Signature Theatre, readings: La Mama ETC, INTAR, Labyrinth and The Lark). CAFÉ (Kennedy Center’s Latinidad Award, Columbia Stages workshop directed by Elena Araoz). La Negra (Workshop: BRIC Arts-directed by Mei Ann Teo, readings; Lincoln Center w/ Classical Theatre of Harlem, Teatro Iati). When I Came Home (Pregones- PRTT) La Migra Taco Truck and Dar a Luz (off Broadway NYC Theatre Row, Aspen Stage, New Theatre–FL). Does that Feel Good to you My Lark?: A Doll’s House Adaptation (Bushwick Starr reading/New Georges – Audrey residency, directed by Miranda Haymon). Cross//Roads: Re-framing the Immigrant Narrative (commissioned workshop: La Micro Theatre). Goddesses Return to the Temple, Live & In Color-June Bingham Commission Awardee. Artistic Advisor of R. Piniella’s bi-lingual Hamlet workshop (The Public Theater). She has been awarded a Professional Development residency with the Eugene O’Neill Center Playwrights Conference and Core Apprentice residency, affiliated writer with The Playwrights’ Center. She is the Executive Director of Indie Space.
Vangeline is a teacher, dancer, and choreographer specializing in Japanese Butoh. She is the artistic director of the Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute (New York).
The Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute is dedicated to advancing Butoh in the 21st century, with a particular emphasis on education, social justice, research, and archiving.
The Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute reaches out to the New York and international community by offering public Butoh classes, workshops, and performances through collaborations with international and national Butoh artists. Our socially conscious performances tie together butoh and activism; our work addresses issues of gender inequality and social justice. Our yearly New York Butoh Institute Festival elevates the visibility of women in butoh, and our festival Queer Butoh gives a voice to LGBTQIA+ butoh artists.
Our award-winning, 18-year running program, The Dream a Dream Project, brings Butoh dance to incarcerated men and women at correctional facilities across New York State.
Vangeline’s choreographed works have been performed in Chile, Hong Kong, Germany, Denmark, France, Italy, the UK, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. She is a 2022/2023 Gibney Dance Dance in Process residency and the 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Dance Award winner. She is also a 2018 NYFA/NYSCA Artist Fellow in Choreography for Elsewhere, the winner of the 2015 Gibney Dance Social Action Award and the 2019 Janet Arnold Award from the Society of Antiquaries of London.
Her work has been heralded in publications such as the New York Times (“captivating”) and Los Angeles Times (“moves with the clockwork deliberation of a practiced Japanese Butoh artist”) to name a few. Film projects include a starring role alongside actors James Franco and Winona Ryder in the feature film by director Jay Anania, 'The Letter" (2012-Lionsgate).
In recent years, she has been commissioned by triple Grammy Award-winning artists Esperanza Spalding, Skrillex, and David J. (Bauhaus). She is the author of the critically-acclaimed book:Butoh: Cradling Empty Space, which explores the intersection of Butoh and neuroscience. She pioneered the first neuroscientific study of Butoh (“The Slowest Wave”). She is also featured on BBC’s podcast Deeply Humanwith host Dessa (episode 2 of 12: Why We Dance
