Five dancers with bald heads and flowing cream and blue skirts perform a synchronized, expressive dance around a vertical structure on a textured stage, reaching out with extended arms in dramatic poses under soft lighting.

Skirball Salon: On Butoh

Skirball Talks

About

Join us for a conversation on Sankai Juku’s history, legacy, and future. With André Lepecki (NYU), Katherine Profeta (Yale) and Yoko Shioya (Japan Society).

Free and open to the public.

André Lepecki (Brazil 1965) Essayist, independent curator and Full Professor at the Department of Performance Studies. Associate Dean, Institute of Critical Studies in the Arts at Tisch, NYU. Editor of several books in performance and dance theory including Of the Presence of the Body, The senses in Performance (with Sally banes), and Dance – documents in contemporary art. Author of Exhausting Dance: performance and the politics of movement; Singularities: dance in the age of performance; Idiorrítimia; and Co(reo)imaginar: ensaios com a dança e a performance.

Yoko Shioya became Artistic Director of Japan Society in 2006. The Society’s 2024-2025 Performing Arts season marks the 20th anniversary since Yoko took the helm of the Performing Arts program. During her tenure, she has enlarged the scale and number of commissions to Americans and non-Japanese artists to create new works related to Japanese culture and increased the number of Society-produced/organized tours to distribute performing arts and music productions throughout North America. She also launched new projects such as Artists-in-Residency for Japanese artists and Annual Play Reading for English-translated contemporary Japanese plays.

Date + Time

Location: NYU Skirball Lower Lobby.

Wednesday Nov 4

6:00 PM

Panel Discussion

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Gallery

Four dancers in flowing white and red costumes stand around a tall transparent pillar on stage, each extending one arm upward, with dramatic lighting emphasizing their poses.

Four dancers with bald caps and painted bodies stand in a line, arms gracefully raised, wearing flowing white skirts with blue designs, performing on a dimly lit stage.

Two performers with white-painted skin and flowing skirts dance on a pale stage, separated by a transparent panel. One appears mid-motion while the other stands still, both reflected in the surface.

ARTISTS

Sankai Juku

Ushio Amagatsu founded Sankai Juku in Tokyo in 1975 and developed a refined “second-generation” butoh that he described as a dialogue with gravity: synchronizing with it rather than escaping it. From 1980 onward, the company toured the world, becoming a fixture at the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris, which co-produced many of its works, and performing in more than forty countries. Amagatsu directed, choreographed, and designed each piece. TOTEM, his last, was completed shortly before his death in March 2024 and is danced by the company he shaped over the course of half a century.