2-day Dance Theater Intensive with Michael Sakamoto
November 19 Saturday 12-5pm
November 20 Sunday 2-6pm
@REUNION 2557 North Avenue Chicago, IL
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This 2 day workshop and conversation with Visiting Butoh dancer, Michael Sakamoto, delves into contemporary Butoh movement and thought, incorporates Hip Hop culture, and engages philosophic discovery. He teaches movement and dance theater fundamentals, butoh-based techniques, and image exercises, using his Hip Hop influence to guide the workshops.
Come layered up to be warm and stay cool. Some movement experience or practice is recommended.
Michael Sakamoto is an interdisciplinary artist active in dance, theatre, media and photography and one of the leading butoh-based performers in the USA. Dedicated to nurturing intercultural dialogue and cultural sustainability through performative and visual methodologies, Michael creates choreographic and narrative performances, media works and photo essays designed to challenge audience assumptions and reveal diverse experiences across geography, language and social boundaries. His works have been presented in 14 countries throughout Asia, Europe and North America, including at REDCAT, Vancouver International Dance Festival, Dance Center of Columbia College-Chicago, TACT/Fest Osaka, UCLA Fowler Museum and many others. He has also received support from numerous national and international funders, including the New England Foundation for the Arts/National Dance Project, Japan Foundation, Asian Cultural Council, Meet the Composer, DanceUSA/James Irvine Foundation, Arts International and many others.
Michael is highly active as a performance and cultural studies scholar, regularly publishing book chapters and articles and presenting at conferences worldwide. His book project, “An Empty Room: Butoh Performance and the Social Body in Crisis”, is under contract with Wesleyan University Press.
Michael is former Co-Program Director of the MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts Program at Goddard College and currently serves as tenure-track Assistant Professor in Dance at University of Iowa. He is currently developing blind spot, his first full-length solo in 15 years, combining intermedia dance theater with themes of cultural identity, intellectual property censorship, and corporate militarism.
