dance

This is the temporary home for butohBuddies.

_{because a press release for the exhibit linked this page for butohBuddies and I’m desperate}.

butohBuddies will perform their first performance as a group in Feb 24, 2024  at 1 pm at Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave, Richmond, CA.

butohBuddies is a collective of performance artists that includes Ruth Ichinaga, Kiyono Kishi, Lipton Mah, Nina Moore, and Irene Wibawa, from the San Francisco Bay Area and Central Valley. Their 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. Their practice is rooted in love, compassion, and acceptance.  Each dancer strives to explore and express in butoh the full spectrum of the human experience, shedding light to shadows and darkness, and finding wholeness in the process. Although each member has had their own extensive performance history, their first performance as butohBuddies will be on February 24, 2023 at 1 pm, as part of the exhibit, Point Molate, at Richmond Art Center, 2540 Barrett Ave, Richmond, CA

Performers

Ruth Ichinaga was born and raised in Berkeley, California.  In 1942 she and her parents and siblings were incarcerated for three years at Topaz, Utah, along with other American families of Japanese descent.  Ruth received her degree in Nursing from UC San Francisco and worked at various public health agencies. Her last employment was at the Oakland Unified School District where she worked for 25 years as a school nurse. She is the mother of three children, grandmother of three grandchildren and recently became a great grandmother to a precious little girl.  She has been playing the taiko for over 25 years which she began studying shortly before retiring. She is truly grateful and feel It was a privilege for her to take improvisational dance classes from Terry Sendgraff, perform with Jill  Guillermo-Togawa and Purple Moon Dance Project and more recently to study and perform with Judy Kajiwara and Oneness Butoh. 

____________________________________________________________

Nina Moore is a mother, grandmother, daughter, sister, auntie, cousin and stands on the shoulders of
her ancestors who survived the middle passage into slavery and escaped the holocaust in Germany.
Born and raised in Los Angeles, Oakland has been home for over 37 years. After 35 years in education,
and prior forays working in communications and community organizations, Nina happily retired from the
University of California in 2017. “Retirement” provides an opportunity for Nina to explore dance forms
that make her heart sing and fill her soul.

After many years of performing African Haitian dance, Nina discovered Butoh. For her Butoh is a
remarkable mixture of power, softness, strength, and flow. butohBuddies allows Nina to go deep inside
and help tell our collective stories. Personal stories, community stories, stories of pain and stories of joy,
of struggle and of triumph, and injustice conquered by justice. She is also a member of the Destiny Arts
Elders Project, committed to deepening intergenerational artistic collaboration between elders and
youth focused on social justice through movement arts.

____________________________________________________________

I have been studying and performing butoh for close to 10 years now and I still find it difficult to explain what the dance form is.  In one form butoh is the source of much that we hide or suppress within ourselves, including anger; anxiety; fear; self loathing; indecisiveness.  But the dance form also allows us to become rebellious; mindful; meditative; wise; confident; mysterious; powerful.

I have always been drawn to the arts.  A painting, a movie, a stage performance, a novel, an opera, a dance…. most have in some degree been able to send shivers down my spine or elicit my hearty laughter or get me to ponder on what I was feeling and why I reacting that way. But I took the expected road to a conventional corporate job and not to a life of a creative person.

That changed upon my first butoh exposure which was a picture in the local newspaper many years ago.  It was a review of a live performance of a famous butoh dance company then touring the United States.  The image of white-powdered half naked men suspended upside down from ropes above the stage was shocking to see but it also triggered in me a fascination combined of shock, interest, anxiety and fear. That image felt very relatable to what I was going through internally in my life at the time, though unconsciously.

When I began studying with Judy Kajiwara, I eventually realized I  was also beginning a self journey of discovering through this dance form who I was internally.  The outside self I presented to friends and family was conventional and safe enough.  But the often conflicted self within me was suppressed and broken into many pieces.

The study and performance of butoh has allowed me to sometimes painfully look at these broken pieces of memory and emotions, and to then try to piece everything together to emerge as one.  At those times when I am truly in the moment, I feel I can inspire myself to not fear the darkness that has been with me, but to also purposefully confront and embrace it as my own.

____________________________________________________________

Never a dancer before entering the world of Butoh, Kiyono has been studying the art form for almost ten years with the other members of butoh*plus.  She considers them both her family and fellow travelers. For her Butoh is a way to tap into both the shadow and the light and to perhaps express what is true for all humans.  She loves to play taiko, study dreams, and experience the deep gifts of being a woman.

____________________________________________________________

Irene Wibawa was born in Indonesia and has resided in the USA since she was 8 years old. She is a multi disciplinary artist in visual and performance art.  Her dance training ranges from traditional Balinese dance to choreography to pop songs.  She has trained with Judith Kajiwara of OnenessButoh and currently explores dance with her fellow dancers in butohBuddies. She is eager to retire from her job at US Department of Agriculture because despite her love for growing plants and rearing insects, it is clear from her butoh dance buddies that retirees have the most fun. 

I hope to have an official butohBuddies website soon (don’t ask me what “that “soon” means), but for now this is our very temporary home.

____________________________________________________________

The rest of this section is about my dance evolution, process (minus the crying and going into fetal position). I like to dance. I’m not skilled/talented/gifted. I barely know my right from… my other right, but I just do it anyway.

When I was in my 20’s I studied and performed briefly with Harsanari, an Indonesian dance troupe based in San Francisco. I learned one or two Sundanese dances. I was terrible at them. I hope there are no video evidence. Then I tried Balinese dance because I knew the teachers. I performed briefly with Gamelan Sekar Jaya and more with Gadung Kasturi. I sucked at that too, but I tried. These were terrible for my self esteem. A major shift happened in my life (divorce), and I tried something completely different. I joined Bay Area Flash Mob in 2014-2018 because their website stated that no dance experience was necessary, and I wanted to be a part of something but remain anonymous simultaneously. I grew to love dance again. They are a very diverse and accepting community. What I lack in youth and talent, I make up in persistence.

I also began training for Butoh with OnenessButoh as of December 2017. I enjoy learning this dance form very much because honesty, authenticity, and emotional quality, regardless of how awkward or uncomfortable they might seem, are celebrated and not shunned. Experimentation is encouraged. This is a welcomed contrast to all other dance forms I’ve ever participated in. I’m very fortunate and grateful to have this opportunity from the Butoh group, OnenessButoh and also from my job, specifically from my supervisor at work who’ve agreed to adjust my schedule accordingly. In March 2019 our group performed Ode to Minamata in UMI with Rain Taiko Ensemble at Douglas Morrisson Theater, Hayward. Click here for photos.

Click on the picture below to see more of the story behind this show.

2020 was a pivotal time for so many people, forcing us to re-evaluate, reconsider one’s values, one’s self. I was no different. While no longer with OnenessButoh, I still explore butoh with my trusted butohBuddies.

In other news, I also still have a dream to learn rollerdancing. I stopped practicing rollerskating in spring 2018, but I began taking it up again in 2021 with the encouragement of Rich City Rollers. I’m still terrible at it, so the dream of rollerdancing remains.

Here are some performances that I participated in: