Vangeline Butoh Theater presents The Slowest Wave

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), a dance company firmly rooted in the tradition of Japanese butoh while carrying it into the twenty-first century.

With her all-female dance company, Vangeline’s socially conscious performances tie together butoh and activism. Vangeline is the founder of the New York Butoh Institute Festival, which elevates the visibility of women in butoh, and the festival Queer Butoh. She pioneered the award-winning, 15-year running program The Dream a Dream Project, which brings butoh dance to incarcerated men and women at correctional facilities across New York State.

Vangeline firmly believes that Butoh can be an instrument of personal and collective transformation in the 21st century. This transformation comes from holding a mirror to each other and integrating our many facets–the beautiful and the ugly; and from reintegrating the forgotten of our society into our midst. 

In collaboration with neuroscientists Sadye Paez, Constantina Theofanopoulou, and composer Ray Sweeten, Vangeline choreographed a 60-minute butoh piece, which is uniquely informed by the protocol being established for a scientific pilot study researching the impact of butoh on brain activity. Vangeline and Sweeten are building on a 20-year history of creative collaboration with a soundscape that is informed by techniques of brainwave entrainment (techniques that affect consciousness through sound). The Slowest Wave investigates the relationship between human consciousness and dance through the use of scalp electroencephalography (EEG); and will foster connections and understanding between dancers, artists, scientists, engineers, and audiences from around the world.

Host or Publisher The Birds Who Walk at Night Butoh Collective