The butohBuddies are Kiyono Kishi, Nina Moore, Lipton Mah, Ruth Ichinaga, and me.
We are buddies. We practice and perform butoh and movements that are maybe not pure butoh, but that are buddies with butoh. Our dance and movements or stillness, and all aspects of our production are on our own terms, even if we have no experience doing it and aren’t perfect. We try anyway.
Our purpose is to practice a mutual love, fascination, and respect for the emotional depth and art of Japanese Butoh as well as for each other. Our practice is rooted in love, compassion, and acceptance.
We present our first work, Undercurrents, as part of the Point Molate exhibit, in a video filmed on location Point Molate Beach Park. The video will loop on a screen for the duration of the exhibit until Mar 16 at Richmond Art Center.
Additionally, we will be performing our work, live, in an event that also includes an artist talk with the amazing artists of Point Molate exhibit, Rebeca Garcia-Gonzalez, Tony Tamayo, and our curator Jenny Balisle of Arts Contra Costa County – artsccc. The event begins at 1 pm.
Point Molate is surrounded by barriers–fences, no trespassing signs, gates. What was once rich open space is now a small public beach. Land originally inhabited by the Huchiun Ohlone has been mostly taken over by a fossil fuel company. The once sacred is exploited.
In spite of this, Point Molate, the land and many of the creatures that live there, thrive and flourish. We dance, spiraling inward, to mourn all that is lost, to celebrate the good that continues, to search for balance and wholeness.
Deep gratitude to the land, the people who inhabited the land here (Huchiun Ohlone people), our own ancestors, our non-human relatives, Arts Contra Costa County – artsccc, Richmond Art Center, and Sogorea Te’ Land Trust (for a short and impactful consultation during the making of this work)
Special thanks to On Ensemble for the use of their music, Butoh Malfunction, to Scott Yoshida for taking the video and turning on the music, to Lipton Mah
for the video editing, and to Ellen Bepp for her valuable feedback.
behind the scenes photo during the video recording.
Any way to get a video of the group
I’m so sorry for the late response and update. The videos of the group performance at Point Molate and Richmond Art Center are finally posted. Thank you so much for your interest. We are so grateful.