NexGen Butoh Lovers Showcase

• • 3ARTS MATCH
  • 79% contributed
  • 21% to go

Featuring artists from North and South America, NexGen Butoh Lovers Showcase (April 9-13) will feature opportunities to learn from Butoh artists at workshops, community discussions, and two stacked nights of performances by featured artists that carry Butoh into the present and future. This contemporary dance form highlights the importance of self discovery and transformation, seeks to steep its audience in collective and connective resonance, and more simply, blow your mind and body simultaneously. Join us!

About This Project

Last fall, Dovetail Studios put out a call for 16 x 2, a subsidized rental of their studio space for a weekend of performance in 2025. After the loss of our primary dance studio (OuterSpace studios) and many important teachers in the last few years, I thought this would be a great moment to premiere NexGen Butoh Lovers Showcase in Chicago, to feel and carry the support of this community that communes around Butoh. So I quickly applied and put down the deposit to hold my space. I saw it as an opportunity to bring visiting artists together to perform and learn together. I also knew that I would not be able to support a group of artists to come together on my own, nor with ticket sales only. That's where 3Arts and you come in. 

Historically, Butoh is a contemporary art form with its origins in Japan by two prescient humans, Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. Their students and proteges continue to pass down direct knowledge through travelling and  teaching all over the world. Butoh has spawned a global art form, with small communities evolving and learning through their bodies collectively. These teachers have offered guiding principles to find our own bodies and each other in a different way, that we as students cultivate and practice, creating our unique takes and responses to the style. Butoh Curious Chi  is a personal project of mine which began in 2014, with Chicago’s first ever Butoh Festival at the Chicago Cultural Center. For eleven years now, we have produced scores of events featuring Butoh artists throughout Chicagoland and beyond. Some of our teachers have come several times, holding workshops, student performances and performing evening length solos (a favorite among our audiences.) Speaking of audiences, which keep reaching and expanding, we are cultivating an inclusive community. We are learning as we go. We are improvising and connecting to ourselves and to each other, deeply. 

At NexGen Butoh Lovers Showcase, we will be highlighting several artists who are studying Butoh deeply and carrying this heritage into the future. For two nights, we will highlight visiting artists Luciana Arias (ATL), Iván-Daniel Espinosa (CO), Peter Redgrave (Bal), and Sophia Solano (OR). Each night will begin with live compositions created by local sound artists Norman W. Long (Friday) and Kim Nucci (Saturday), and accompanied by improvisors Cristal Sabbagh, Helen Lee, and more TBA. In the days before and after, there will be Butoh workshops led by our visiting artists. This small festival hopes to draw a full house for both nights, as well as full attendance for workshops and discussions. Ticket prices will range to include student and senior discounts, as well as fully subsidized options. Funds that are collected  through this 3AP campaign will go toward artists’ travel, performance stipends, teaching fees, our lighting technician, and documentarians for our main event, NexGen Butoh Lovers Showcase April 9-13. We look forward to celebrating with you there!

 

Thank yous

Contribute any amount or choose from the levels below.

• $15
  "Thank you" shout out & listed as supporter on website ($15.00 is tax deductible.)
• $50
  Above + T-shirt ($25.00 is tax deductible.)
• $100
  "Thank you" shout out & listed as supporter on website + 2 tickets to one show night ($50.00 is tax deductible.)
• $175
  Tickets to 1 workshop, Poster, T-shirt, & "Thank you" shout out & listed as supporter on website ($80.00 is tax deductible.)
• $500
  2 ticket to a show, 1 workshop ticket, T-shirt, Poster, "Thank you" shout out & listed as supporter on website ($355.00 is tax deductible.)

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Sara Zalek

Make a Wave Artist

Sara Zalek is a transdisciplinary artist, producer, and curator of Butoh related situations. Rooted in physical investigations of trauma, resilience, and transformation, their work is intimate, raw, poetic. They make performances combining sound, movement, image and voice, host movement workshops, …

View Sara Zalek's profile

• 3 updates
• 33 supporters

• Update 1: Our first Thank you's <3

  Posted on March 10, 2025

  

  Graece Gabriel  

  Sophia Solano

  I am so happy to be sharing the NexGen Butoh Lovers Showcase with our Chicago community and beyond! Thank you to all our supporters thus far, for getting us over the 15% mark in just 3 days. Jenn, Chris, Kathleen, Aurora, Nathan, Kristen, Logan, Elaine, Heather, Anonymous, too, Thank you! This gives us so much Hope! And with that, I do Hope you get tickets as well, and come out to see these gorgeous performances in real life! Let me paint you a picture of our first night, Friday, April 11 at Dovetail Studios.

   

  Each night the doors open at 7:30pm. On Friday, Norman W. Long, a frequent collaborator and friend, a brilliant artist and composer, will encourage our deepest listening as he shares his collection of sounds, altered, fragmented, and closely attuned. In these precious moments, Helen Lee and Cristal Sabbagh will open the physical space, improvising together as you enter. At 8:10pm, the Showcase will begin. Sophia Solano presents MAESTRAS. In this, she pays homage to her teachers at the intersection of flamenco and butoh. Flamenco has informed and influenced butoh from its earliest origins, with one exceptional 1929 Tokyo performance by Antonia Mercé y Luque "La Argentina" allegedly motivating Kazuo Ohno to leave his studies as a gymnast and commit himself entirely to dance. Sophia comes all the way from Newport, Oregon and we are delighted to have her.
  
  Peter Redgrave brings a very specific niche to the Butoh tradition as well, using vaudeville and puppetry to bring his audience closer to his vulnerability. Peter has been working with Butoh and many other intersections of performance art, dance, music improvisation, and community building ways over the years, including an annual “dance camp” in and around Baltimore, MD called Move Move. This group work is vital to the creative community. 

  
  Finally, I, Sara Z, will take the opportunity to present a new solo, which is incredibly special to me. Reciprocity grapples with feelings of ownership, exchange, what lives in our subconscious, and the ability to play with our biggest fears, alone and together.

  We look forward to sharing these works with you! 

  Love & Thanks,

  Sara

   

  Update 2: Mid-Point

  Posted on March 19, 2025

  

  Ricardo Adame  

  Cristal Sabbagh

  Working to get up to $2K Match amount! Wading through the details and the nitty gritty of administration is not my favorite part of the job, and yet it is completely vital to crafting a beautiful show. To sculpt it to life and nurture its tiny flame. Taking deep breaths into it, giving time and space for movement. The heaviest blocks are often deep inside, and as I work through my feet, from the Earth, I find my way, not a straight path at all. I find pockets of time where I can be in silence, listening, re-ordering and shifting my values, my tasks, finding communal moments in art making and bearing witness. I keep finding productive ways to express my anger, my disgust with the status quo, always seeking new ways, openly asking for help. I am assembling a time and place for this magical communion of artists, dancers, thinkers, poets, musicians, courageous humans.

   

  The second night is firmly planted, now that brilliant horticultural lover and local jazz star Luc Mosley is joining Luciana Arias for her solo performance. Luciana, originally from Argentina, is coming from Atlanta, GA just to be here with us performing and teaching, as they are making their way toward the dance divine. The night begins at 7:30p with Kim Nucci, who with her luminous and cinematic soundscapes will build a world within a world, eventually leading to laaura goldstein’s site specific version of performance poem, The Tower. Some introductions will be made, followed by the aforementioned duo, then followed by an ensemble piece by Pacific Northwest’s illustrious up and coming choreographer/producer Iván-Daniel Espinosa and his cast: Harlan Rosen, Wannapa Pimtong-Eubanks, Corin Wiggins, Arlo Sage King, Stefan Bach, and Sheri Brown of DAIPANbutoh.

   

  Finally, I will take the opportunity to present this new solo for the second time ever, somehow crafted differently based on what I experience the night before. Reciprocity grapples with feelings of ownership, exchange, what lives in our subconscious, things that cannot be erased, and the ability to play with our biggest fears, alone and together. 

   

  I look forward to sharing this incredible work with you all. Please give generously if you are able, tickets for shows and workshops are available with limited seating of 70 people per night. Use promo code STUDENT for 50% off any tickets, or find a limited supply of subsidized tickets by booking your reservation today. 

   

  Love, and Shine ON

  Sara

   

  Update 3: Thank You <3 <3

  Posted on March 22, 2025

  

  Sara Zalek  

  Special thanks to our supporters thus far! They are the Butoh Lovers we Love! We are so thankful and couldnt do it without all of you <3

  Jenn Guptill, Kathleen Rooney & Martin Seay, Aurora Tabar, Logan Berry, Roman Susan, Elaine Lemieux, Chris Zalek, Lindsey Snyder, Heather McClelland, Cristal Sabbagh, Carole McCurdy, Norman W. Long, Nora Sharp, Raul & Jenny Espinosa, Joan Laage, Rika Lin, Nirmesh Gollamandala, Brian Zahm, Amy Wilkinson, Katinka Kleijn, and many more who prefer to remain Anonymous.

  Thank you. We have met our $2k match today, we are now on the homestretch deadline of April 5, approaching just days before the show! What a nailbiter :) A don't forget to grab your tickets, they are going fast~~~~~

  More soon, Love.

  Sara

• Thank you to the following for contributing to 3Arts with the recommendation that we support this project.

  • Jennifer Guptill

  • Kathleen Rooney

  • Christopher Zalek

  • Anonymous Supporter

  • Logan Berry

  • Elaine Lemieux

  • Aurora Tabar

  • Lindsey Snyder

  • Carole McCurdy

  • cristal sabbagh

  • Nora Sharp

  • Anonymous Supporter

  • Norman Long

  • Harlan Rosen

  • RAUL & JENNY ESPINOSA

  • Joan Laage

  • Rika Lin

  • Anonymous Supporter

  • Anonymous Supporter

  • Brian Zahm

  • amy wilkinson

  • Katinka Kleijn

  • Carole McCurdy

  • Lorene Bouboushian

  • Jennifer Karmin

  • mabel kwan

  • Anonymous Supporter

  • Johanna Brock

  • Wannapa Pimtong Eubanks

  • Sharon Udoh

  • Iván Espinosa

  • Kevin Sparrow

  • Geoff Guy

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