New York Butoh Institute presents Noguchi Taiso Class Series

Vangeline Theater, home of New York Butoh Institute, will present a Noguchi Taiso Class Series with Melissa Lohman, on Monday, August 10, 17, 24, and 31, 2026, from 6pm-8pm at 115 Wooster Street, New York, NY, 10012. Each class is $25. For more information and to register, visit https://www.vangeline.com/enroll-here.

Noguchi Taiso is a Japanese body release practice developed by Michizo Noguchi that emphasizes relaxation, fluidity, and responsiveness to gravity. Widely practiced by Butoh dancers, it serves as a foundational training method for cultivating receptivity, effortless movement, and bodily awareness. Beginners are welcome.

This program is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the New York Department of Cultural Affairs, and the City Council.

Melissa Lohman is a teacher, performer, choreographer, and visual artist from New York City, currently based in Rome, Italy. She received her BFA from the School of Visual Arts in 2000. Since the mid-1990s, she has created performances for theaters, museums, galleries, and unconventional spaces internationally. Her artistic practice explores inhabiting a space and being observed, rather than presenting something to an audience.

Recent projects include Lean (2026), a performance-installation with Flavio Arcangeli presented at the Nervi Pavilion in Rome for Open House Rome XIV Edition; Contemplate Your Navel! (2025), a solo exhibition featuring performances, drawings, video, sculpture, and a series of movement and drawing workshops; and Tramite (2024), a performance created within Fabrizio Crisafulli's light installation of the same title, presented in the burial chamber of the Pyramid of Caius Cestius in Rome as part of Piramide Contemporaneo.

In 2023, Melissa performed a durational work for Crisafulli's installation Transiti at the Academy of Fine Arts of Carrara. In 2022, she danced alongside her Noguchi Taiso teacher, Mari Osanai, in Deposition at the Kyoto International Butoh Festival. That same year, she collaborated with Flavio Arcangeli on Across, a site-specific performance at MAXXI Museum in Rome presented during The Heretical Body: Butoh Dance from Its Inception Until Today. Earlier projects include A Sweet Topia (2021), a site-specific performance and solo exhibition at Museo delle Mura in Rome. From 2018 to 2020, she was an invited performer at the New York Butoh Institute Festival.

Vangeline is a New York–based teacher, choreographer, and dancer specializing in Japanese Butoh. As the artistic director of the Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute, she is widely recognized for her rigorous, research-driven approach to Butoh and for expanding the form’s relevance in the 21st century. Her work actively champions diversity and inclusion within the field, creating space for historically underrepresented voices. She carries forward the legacy of Butoh while infusing it with contemporary relevance—through activism, research, and performance.

Through her all-female dance company, Vangeline creates socially engaged, innovative choreographic works that unite Butoh with activism. She is the founder of both the New York Butoh Institute Festival, which uplifts the work of women in Butoh, and Queer Butoh, a festival centering LGBTQ+ voices within the form. She is also the visionary behind The Dream a Dream Project, an award-winning program now in its 18th year that brings Butoh to incarcerated individuals in correctional facilities across New York State.

At the heart of Vangeline’s philosophy is the belief that Butoh can be a tool for both personal and collective transformation. Her work reflects a deep commitment to integrating the many dimensions of the human experience—beauty and darkness alike—and reintegrating society’s marginalized voices.

Vangeline’s choreography has been presented internationally in Chile, Germany, Italy, France, Finland, Denmark, the UK, Mexico, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. She is the recipient of a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Dance Award for her groundbreaking project The Slowest Wave, which explores the intersection of Butoh and neuroscience. She was also a 2022–2023 Gibney Dance in Process resident artist, a 2018 NYFA/NYSCA Fellow in Choreography for Elsewhere, and 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 widely acclaimed, both nationally and internationally, with critics praising its power, precision, and emotional resonance. Reviews have appeared in publications including The New York Times (“captivating”) and the Los Angeles Times (“moves with the clockwork deliberation of a practiced Japanese Butoh artist”), to name just a few.

Her work extends to film as well, including a starring role opposite James Franco and Winona Ryder in Jay Anania’s feature film The Letter (Lionsgate, 2012). She has also been commissioned by Grammy Award–winning artists Esperanza Spalding, Skrillex, and David J. (Bauhaus).

Vangeline is the author of the critically acclaimed book Butoh: Cradling Empty Space, which delves into the connection between Butoh and neuroscience. She led the first-ever scientific study measuring the effects of Butoh on the brain (The Slowest Wave). Her work has been profiled in CNN’s Great Big Story (“Learning to Dance with Your Demons”), featured on the BBC’s Deeply Human podcast (with host Dessa), and explored in her own podcast Butoh Musing with Vangeline.

She was recently awarded a prestigious fellowship at Wadham College, University of Oxford, for the 2026–2027 academic year. She looks forward to performing MAN WOMAN at the Schwarzman Centre, University of Oxford, in September 2025 and premiering her new solo NAIAD METAL at Lincoln Center in August 2026. www.vangeline.com

VANGELINE THEATER/ NEW YORK BUTOH INSTITUTE aims to preserve the legacy and integrity of Japanese Butoh while carrying the art form into the future, with a special emphasis on education, social justice, research, and archiving. For more info, visit: www.vangeline.com

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