After a sold-out run, critical acclaim and a Bessie Award, Dogugaeshi returns to Japan Society, the home of its commission and 2004 world premiere. Renowned puppet artist Basil Twist unfolds an intimate, abstract journey of images of ancient and modern Japan in this gorgeous multidisciplinary theater work.

Layered with the company’s fearless fusion of dance, music and visual design, The Other Here collides the rural stories of Japanese novelist Masuji Ibuse (1898–1993) with a global conference of life insurance salespeople. Okinawan pop music and re-inventions of traditional dance punctuate this juxtaposition of master and servant, pop and ancient, East and West.

With special guests Ikue Mori & C. Spencer Yeh

Curated by New York-based electronic musician, composer and multimedia artist Aki Onda, this program offers a particularly unusual audiovisual experience as three of Tokyo’s most innovative performers from the underground music and sound art scene use self-made devices and unique instruments to transform electronic and digital information into sound, light and image.

A legendary and highly influential presence within the Japanese contemporary dance scene, Mika Kurosawa is known for highly experimental works that combine pared-down movement inspired by the work of Trisha Brown and Yvonne Rainer with elaborate costumes evocative of fairy tales and cabaret performance.

Tiger’s Cave: Butoh Boot Camp (Tora no Ana)
Choreographed by Kumotaro Mukai

Yupiters
Choreographed by Yuko Kobayashi

In celebration of the 101st birthday of Kazuo Ohno, legendary artist and one of the founders of the butoh movement, maverick butoh master Akaji Maro presents two theatrically explosive works created by members of his company, Dairakudakan. Special appearance by Akaji Maro for all performances.

The Matsuyama, Japan-based quintet, Yummy Dance returns to New York for a shared evening with special guest artist Nami Yamamoto. The performers in Yummy Dance’s Bring Me a PPPeach grapple with waiting and heightening states of impatience. As time lags, they grow more and more insane. Acclaimed Japanese-American choreographer Nami Yamamoto offers audiences a peek at her work-in-progress, tony, and me.

MacArthur “genius” fellowship awardees Eiko & Koma return to Japan Society (where they made their U.S. debut in 1976) for the world premiere of their latest work and Japan Society commission, Mourning, with celebrated avant-garde pianist Margaret Leng Tan performing live on both toy and grand piano.

Founded in 2000 and based in Osaka, the butoh-based all female troupe Sennichimae Blue Sky Dance Club uncovers new, original physical expression with a pop sensibility. Their choreography is born out of carefully observing elements from the physical memory of modern life and bringing them into new light.

At Anthology Film Archive, Dance Theater Workshop, CAVE, Japan Society, The Martin E. Segal Theatre Center/CUNY Graduate Center, Movement Research, The Noguchi Museum, SAFE-T-GALLERY, Theater for the New City

The CAVE New York Butoh Festival celebrates the origins and international evolution of butoh in a biennial series of performances, workshops, films and lectures featuring butoh greats Ko Murobushi and Yukio Waguri, and cutting-edge artists, including Garnica AcTs Lab interdisciplinary collaboration  as well as other U.S.-based solo performers.

Check website for dates and tickets: www.caveartspace.org
Workshop registration is now open! E-mail: workshops@CAVEartspace.org

Japan Society commissioned legendary performer Akira Kasai, one of the co-founders of the butoh movement, to create Butoh America in collaboration with five emerging U.S.-based performers hand-picked by Kasai through a three-day audition last year. Kasai will perform and choreograph Butoh America in what promises to be an electrifying exploration of present-day America.

Loud, violent, transgressive and fueled by radical politics, kabuki and 1970s punk were both unforgiving performance movements that captured the stories of social discord. Theatre of a Two-Headed Calf calls on both these forms to take on this five-episode saga by Chikamatsu Monzaemon, the “Shakespeare of Japan.”

4:30 pm: U.S. Butoh Marathon
7:30 pm: Yoshito Ohno
Followed by Kazuo Ohno 101 Birthday Party

On October 27, Kazuo Ohno’s actual birthday, a marathon of performances from U.S.-based artists takes over Japan Society. Participating choreographer/dancers Jeff Janisheski & Yanira Castro; Moeno Wakamatsu; Haruko Nishimura; Koichi & Hiroko Tamano; Juan Merchan; Shinichi Iova-Koga; and Ximena Garnica are curated by CAVE, the organizer of the 3rd NY Butoh Festival. Headlining the evening is a haunting solo work. by Yoshito Ohno, son of Kazuo Ohno. The evening culminates with a Birthday Party.

Japanese dance-theater troupe Pappa Tarahumara creates expressive and poignant visual spectacles. Drawing on dreams and memories of his seaside Japanese home, artistic director Hiroshi Koike conjures images at once hallucinatory and disturbing in Ship in a View.

Iconoclastic American composer Harry Partch (1901–74) designed and created dozens of unique instruments for the performance of his music. Now, Japan Society commissions and produces an unprecedented re-staging of his Delusion of the Fury, a musical theater piece that has never been remounted since its first production in 1969. Built upon the timeless theme of life and death, Delusion of the Fury is based on two classic noh plays and an African folktale, and requires performers to sing, act and dance.