A new dance festival arrives in Bellingham in August, including week-long workshops that will culminate in a final performance at the FireHouse Arts & Events Center in Fairhaven. The Salish Sea Butoh Festival, which started in Port Townsend in 2021, is “an annual artistic convergence in the Pacific Northwest to celebrate and deepen the study of Japanese Butoh and Butoh performance” according to the festival’s website.
Butoh, a contemporary, avant-garde dance form, emerged in Japan in the late ’50s and early ‘60s. On a basic level, Butoh is characterized by slow, arrhythmic movement, with dancers covered head-to-toe in body paint. However, the practice of this complicated artform tackles broader themes and ways of making meaning through presence and movement, often linking human bodies to local ecologies.
An article in Stanford Humanities Center’s Arcade Journal explains that nature-oriented Butoh workshops and performances, “provide participants an experience of being enmeshed with their surroundings and ask them to learn how to dance with, not in, the more-than-human world.”
Founder and Executive Director of the Salish Sea Butoh Festival, Iván Daniel Espinosa, learned about Butoh as an undergraduate at Evergreen College and connected with the Seattle Butoh scene, largely influenced by Joan Laage. Espinosa is now working on a dissertation about Butoh as a PhD candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies program at the University of Colorado-Boulder, but is thrilled with the growth and increasing interest in the festival.
In reflecting on the event’s inception, Espinosa said, “I emerged post-pandemic with creativity, with imagination, and with a willingness to not give up on community gatherings.”
The move to Bellingham from Port Townsend offers more accessibility for participants traveling from Canada and those flying to the Seattle area for the multi-day event. The festival will also center the immersive workshops at the Lookout Arts Quarry, a 61-acre land site collectively purchased by a group of artists in 2007.
Four teaching artists — Tadashi Endo, Yukio Suzuki, josie j. (also known as divinebrick) and Sara Zalek — will be leading the festival’s workshops. Each brings their unique perspective, background and experience with Butoh, creating an “an intergenerational lineup” as described by Espinosa.
Endo, who was born in Peking, China to Japanese parents but currently resides in Germany, represents the Kazuo Ohno lineage of Butoh. Yukio Suzuki, coming from Japan, derives from the lineage of Tatsumi Hijikata, Butoh’s founder. Both are globally-known Butoh performers and artists.
Coming from Los Angeles, josie j., is one of the only Native America Butoh artists in the country and will be teaching a workshop called “Corporeal Reformation: Butoh Explorations and Body as Phenomenon.” Sara Zalek, a transdisciplinary artist, leads several Butoh activities in the Chicago area and founded Butoh Curious, a Chicago-based organization. These workshop teachers and several guest artists, including Joan Laage, will also be part of the public performances on Friday and Saturday night.
Teresa Dalton of FireHouse said, “I’m proud when we have the chance to host performances like this at the FireHouse as it exposes our patrons to something new and exciting, along with being educational and enlightening.”
The Salish Sea Butoh Festival runs from Aug. 12-20. Though workshop registration is full, residents might come across a Butoh workshop performance in nature somewhere around Bellingham over the week of the Aug. 12. Espinosa adds that they will be “performing outdoors in the Bellingham waters, in the Bellingham forests, as part of our workshops as part of our research.”
Tickets for the Aug. 16 and 17 public performances can be purchased on the FireHouse Arts & Events Center website.
Info: firehouse-aec.com, salishseabutoh.com.
Jessica Gigot is a poet and writing coach. She lives on a little sheep farm in the Skagit Valley. See her work at jessicagigot.com.
