an evening of BUTOH featuring:

KATSURA KAN with JACK WRIGHT

KRISTIN NAROWICH with TOSHI MAKIHARA

Butoh is the collective name for a diverse range of techniques and motivations for dance inspired by the Ankoku-Butoh movement. It typically involves playful and grotesque imagery often performed in white-body makeup but there is no set style.

KATSURA KAN (butoh)
JACK WRIGHT (sound)

Based in KYOTO since 1979 Master Butoh artist, choreographer and teacher Katsura Kan is a Butoh artist among the ranks of Japanís first generation of Butoh. He performed with the seminal Butoh troupe ìByakkoshaî (1979-1981). Kan has worked with what he calls dancers in remote locations throughout Africa, Europe, South East Asia for the past 28 years, in addition to performing his creative works in cosmopolitan cultures.

Kan graduated from Buddhism University (Kyoto) and studied Noh theater with master Hirota (Kongoh School). In 1986, He established his own multinational Dance Troupe named “KATSURA Kan & SALTIMBANQUES” whose purpose was the free interpretation of divers genres as a contemporary dance scene. In 1992, he founded another research group, HARVESTING BEAUTY IN THE FIELD who aims contemporary Asian art form among the Asian artists for 4 years throughout Japan and Indonesia.
In 1997, Kan has been a recipient of multiple grants from Japan Foundation and worked on numerous collaboration projects with researchers, visual arts, music, computer art, architecture, dramatic art during his residence in Thailand for 5 years. In 2001, he starts his extensive performance career in the world. In 2006, he co-founded together with Gabriella Daris, the butoh variations collective salto donec moriar. His significant Dance theatre works are “Bhagavad-gita” from MAHABHARATA of Indian historical Play, ” La Mort D’Empedocle” of Greek tragedy in Paris and “Curious Fish” in Edinburgh Fringe Festival where his group got the five star rating. Katsura Kan is seeking the globalization of Butoh and enlightenment on the classical Japanese Noh theatre.

After teaching at Temple University in the 1960s and leaving academia in the early 1970s to engage in radical politics and community organizing, by the late 1970s Jack Wright directed his energies into music. He is one of a very small group of musicians in North America that has played improvised music exclusively since the 1970s. Through years of near constant touring, often performing for audiences in cities and towns where improvised music had never before been heard, he came to be regarded as something of an underground legend. He has deliberately eschewed the conventions and socio-aesthetic limitations of musical careerism to pursue his own vision. Although his de-professionalized approach sets him apart from most musicians at his level of accomplishment, his art has always grown, expanded, and synthesized new information. He is unquestionably an original and virtuosic saxophonist, a master improviser who is deeply lyrical, with humor never far away. Today Wright tours frequently in Europe and North America (and in Japan in 2006), making new musical and human connections, bringing European musicians to the U.S. and bringing musicians everywhere together. His inspiration has provided crucial impetus to hundreds of musicians and has even motivated several people to establish music venues in order to present him and other improvisers (e.g. Baltimores High Zero festival). His vast list of collaborators includes some  luminaries (William Parker, Axel Dorner, Michel Doneda, Andrea Neumann, Denman Maroney, Bhob Rainey to name a few) but more significant are the many obscure greats he has played with. He has made over 40 recordings (many published on his own Spring Garden label), performed in over 20 countries, and written extensively and insightfully about music and society for journals such as Improjazz (France) and Signal to Noise (US), as well as his own website.

KRISTIN NARCOWICH (butoh)
TOSHI MAKIHARA (sound performance)

Kristin Narcowich studied dance from the age of eight, inself-taught spinning, falling in love with ballet, then studying Modern Dance, w/a BFA at UArts. She has performed with (and currentlyworks for) Ausdrukstanz Dance | Imprints in Motion, w/directorBrigitta Herrmann, who was a student of Mary Wigman. Studying voice with Holly Phares, she has performed in choirs that include: the
Choral Arts Society, & in the Bach festival Philadelphia), also the NWMahler Chorus(Seattle), dancing there for 2yrs w/ Joan Laage, (Dappin Butoh). Returning to complete an MA. in the PhD. program of
Religion(Asian thought) at Temple University, she taught courses on “Death and Dying”, while dancing with Moeno Wakamatsu / musicians Toshi Makihara and WOZ. In 2006, studied with Akira Kasai in the
first months of his intensive training program(Tokyo). For the past years she has been ghostwriter/grantwriter (often in residence) for CAVEOrganization(Brooklyn), founders of the NY Butoh festival.

Toshi Makihara studied drums, percussion and improvisation with Sabu Toyozumi, a prominent percussionist in Tokyo. Since arriving in the United States in the late 1970’s he has worked with various new music ensembles as well as with numerous dance and theater companies
internationally. Makihara has provided original music to Arden Theater Company, Diversions Dance Company (Wales), Pennsylvania Ballet, ZeroMoving Dance Company and Leah Stein Dance Company among others, and has worked with musicians including Steve Beresford, Peter
Brotzmann, John Butcher, Nels Cline, Eugene Chadbourne, Tom Cora, Amy Denio, Thurston Moore, William Parker and John Zorn. He has also collaborated with poets, visual artists, filmmakers and performance artists widely.