Ariane Anthony has choreographed and directed numerous works of dance-theater, both independently and as artistic director of Ariane Anthony & Company, founded in 2000. Her influences include butoh, comedic dance of early silent film, the Ballets Russes, clown, and German expressionism. She has been presented at numerous venues in New York City and nationally, as well as in Finland and Belgium. New York City presenters include Joyce SoHo, Dancing in the Streets, Dixon Place, Williamsburg Arts neXus, New Dance Alliance, Chashama, Movement Research, DanceNow Downtown, and Here Arts Center’s American Living Room Festival 2006. Anthony performed and trained in butoh with Maureen Fleming and has taken workshops with Eiko and Koma, Diego Pinon, and Su-en. She has other dance training from The Joffrey Ballet School, the Merce Cunningham and Mary Anthony Studios, and Harvard University. She also studies and performs European mask and clown techniques, and has been on the faculty of the New York Mask and Clown Workshop since 2002: www.maskandclown.com. She teaches dance and theater at Ramapo College of New Jersey and is an artist in residence at The Construction Company. www.arianeanthony.org

Tanya Calamoneri (Choreographer/Artistic Director) is a performer, choreographer and teacher who works in the areas of contemporary dance, Japanese Butoh, physical theater, and yoga. She was a member of the Butoh-based company inkBoat from 2000-2003, touring to Germany and within the Western U.S., working as a performer, teacher, and administrative manager with artistic director Shinichi Momo Koga. Since 2000, she has studied Butoh intensively under Minako Seki, Ko Murobushi, Carlotta Ikeda, Shinichi Koga, Yuko Kaseki, Takuya Muramatsu of Dairakurakan, Su-En, and others. Tanya moved to New York in 2003, completed her MA from NYU’s Gallatin School, for which she wrote a curriculum to teach Butoh dance in American higher education, and helped found the live/work rehearsal and performance space Studio 111 in Brooklyn. Tanya is a co-director of the arts service organization, The Field, in New York City.

Irem’s life as a dancer started in Istanbul, at the Theater Research Lab with Mustafa Kaplan. Being deeply moved by a Butoh performance she saw in Istanbul, she went on to complete a Master’s thesis on Butoh and post war politics in Japan at the Anthropology Department of UMass, Amherst. She has studied with Akira Kasai, Ko Murobushi, and Takuya Muramatsu as well as training for 2 years at the Cunningham School for Dance. Her biggest inspiration was the 5 months she spent training with Min Tanaka at the Body Weather Farm. Irem has been showing her own work in various venuessuch as Dixon Place, Movement Research at Judson Church, Cave Art Space and Cunningham Studio.

Daniel Carter is a musician and improviser playing yearly at the Vision Festival, and internationally with many groups. He has played for many dancers including Margaret Beals, Simone Forti and Laurie Hockman. He has recorded several CDs with the group Other Dimensions.is a musician and improviser playing yearly at the Vision Festival, and internationally with many groups. He has played for many dancers including Margaret Beals, Simone Forti and Laurie Hockman. He has recorded several CDs with the group Other Dimensions.

YANIRA CASTRO is a Puerto-Rico born choreographer who is the director of Yanira Castro + Company. Her highly acclaimed work has been presented at Dance Theater Workshop, Danspace Project, HERE and Dixon Place. The Village Voice said, “Her movement is quirky; remarkably polished performances propel her unexpected stutters and awkward positions.” Although not a butoh dancer per se, her expressionistic and emotionally charged pieces share aspects of its aesthetic. The Village Voice described her off-kilter performers as “radiant mythic beasts, glamorous and terrifying…”

In 2006 she was an Intern at the Sundance Theatre Lab. BFA Theatre: Acting::University of Utah Actor's Training Program (2006). Studied Mask, Puppetry, Piano, Violin, Yoga, Butoh, and IPA Transcription.

Leigh Evans' dance theater work is fed by her fascination with the performance and meditative traditions of Asia. At the root of her work is an intense exploration of awareness and performance practices that awaken the energy body. She has taken four extensive journeys to Asia for in-depth studies in Indian Odissi Dance, Butoh, Suzuki Theater Method, Balinese dance, and yoga. Her one-woman show, When Day Became Night, was presented at the The Ontological Theater Incubator Residency Festival, August '07. She has been presented at PS122 AGA, CRS’ Tribute to Butoh, Manhattanville College, Galapagos, and Studio 303 in Montreal. She was nominated for Best Performer 2003 by the SF Isadora Duncan Awards for an earlier incarnation of When Day Became Night. On the West Coast, her work has been presented at the Seattle Butoh Festival, SF International Butoh Festival, Theater Artaud, Tsunami Festival, Women on the Edge Festival, and Noh Space. She teaches performance workshops on The Anatomy of Presence as well as Yoga retreats nationally and internationally.

http://www.healthyarts.com/leighevansyoga

Rachel Finan is the co-founder and artistic director of the X Performance Group (XPG), an experimental theatre group that includes butoh dance. Rachel’s background in theatre, movement, yoga and gymnastics provided an excellent springboard into butoh. She is the choreographer of a small butoh dance company in Grand Rapids MI, where she holds weekly explorations that lead to performance. Her primary butoh teacher is Diego Pinon, she has studied extensively with Pinon and is currently a part of his North American Butoh Project. Rachel has also studied with Shinichi Momo Koga, Yuko Kaseki, Akira Kasai, Yumiko Yoshioka, Katsura Kan, and Eiko and Koma. Rachel has been exploring Butoh for seven years, and working with XPG since 1998. Rachel studied theatre at New York University (1989-1992), she is also an avid yoga practitioner/teacher and makeup artist.

Sondra Fraleigh is Professor Emeritus of Dance and Somatic Studies at the State University of New York at Brockport. She is the co-author Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo (2006) and author of Dancing into Darkness: Butoh, Zen, and Japan (1999). She has been chair of dance at Brockport and a Faculty Exchange Scholar for the State University of New York. Her innovative choreography has been seen in theaters in New York, Germany, and Japan, and she is the founding director of Eastwest Somatics Institute for the study of movement therapy and dance.

Denise Fujiwara is a choreographer, dancer, actor, dance impresario and teacher with 27 years of professional experience. She is one of the founders of T.I.D.E. (Toronto Independent Dance Enterprise), a notorious company that danced across Canada for 10 years. Fujiwara’s dance has been featured in dance festivals in Seattle, Washington DC, Vancouver, Calgary, Copenhagen, Ecuador and India. Based in Canada, Fuhjiwara continues to develop original solo and ensemble dance performance.

GARNICA LEIMAY AcTS LAB is a dance-theater performance and production lab dedicated to the exploration of the actor-dancer craft. Solos and collaborations include art installations, dance-theater pieces, inter-media collaborations and improvisational studies. Garnica’s aesthetics and means of working are deeply motivated by Japanese butoh concepts.

www.leimayactslab.org

MONICA DREIDEMIE (New York, Argentina)
Monica Dreidemie is a dancer, actress and instructor of Fedora Aberastury Movement Technique. She has performed as a solo improvisational dancer for many years mainly in Buenos Aires and New York. She is a founding member of the Argentinean theater company "La Noche en Vela", directed by Paco Gimenez (1991-present) and has participated in various international festivals winning several awards.

MARIKO ENDO (Japan)
Mariko Endo has studied psychoanalysis, bodywork, and dream work. In 1999 she started to learn butoh dance with Master Akira Kasai in his open class. She began training with Akaji Maro of Dairakudakan in 2000, and from 2001-2003 performed all of the pieces of Dairakudakan as a principal dancer, including performances in Tokyo, Osaka, New York and Durham. Mariko spent 2006-2007 working with Akira Kasai at his private dance institute. She is currently an artist in residence at CAVE.

XIMENA GARNICA (New York/ Colombia)
Ximena Garnica was born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1981. She is an actress-dancer, choreographer, emerging theater director and installation artist based in New York City. Director/ co-founder and co-curator of the New York Butoh Festival, she is also the artistic director of GARNICA LEIMAY AcTS LAB, and co-director of CAVEOrganization. Upon moving to NYC in 1998, she began self-training in butoh and physical theater while receiving a B.A. from the City College of New York. Directing projects include: "La Marcha," an ensemble piece by Argentinean play writer Alberto Adellach (2002), an original work titled "Tracing W(rite)" (2004), and "Homodramaticus" at the Spanish Repertory Theater in NY (2005). Her installation works "In Illo Tempore" (2003), "Una Luz" (2004) and "Partial View of an Elusive Presence" (2005) were presented at CAVE. She has danced the choreography of Yukio Waguri, Akira Kasai, Atsushi Takenuchi, and has been studying with artists among the ranks of Japan's first generation of Butoh, including Kasai, Waguri, and Ko Murobushi, among others. In 2006, she was in Tokyo as a student in at the Tenshikan Dance Institute and toured through four Japanese cities with her new production: "Frantic Beauty" (2007). Throughout the past six years, Garnica has collaborated with many artists and musicians under the banner of CAVEnsemble, creating improvisations in galleries and alternative performance spaces.

I-LIEN HO (NEW YORK/ TAIWAN)
I-Lien Ho received her MA in Performance Studies at NYU(2007). A performing artist/activist in Taiwan, she studied multi-media production in college. Ho is interested in Butoh and Antonin Artaud to search for the anarchic body - the time/space/gastro-intestinal approach to Performance Studies.

HAZUKI HOMMA (NEW YORK/ JAPAN)
Hazuki Homma is originally from Japan, where she studied classical and modern dance. Since moveing to NYC, she has studied at Dance New Amsterdam (formerly Dance Space Center).and worked with such choreographers as Mariah Molony, Jenny Jenonius, Naoko Kikuchi, and others. Also, she participated in a movement-theater piece produced by Aylam Orian, and is currently studying at HB studio.

JONOTHON HOWARD (NEW YORK)
Jonothon Howard graduated from Arizona State University with a BA in Theatre in 2004. Since then he has been living in New York City working in music promotion and performing as an actor and dancer. He is currently a company member in Imago Theatre's Frogz and Biglittlethings, which have taken him on many national as well as international tours. In addition to touring he performs with the company seasonally at Imago's home in Portland, Oregon. Other recent productions include Sexual Perversity in Chicago, Reckless, The Cherry Orchard, A Clockwork Orange, subUrbia, A Chorus Line, and J.B. Next year he will appear in the film Couchgarden with Studio Rêver.

TAKUYA ISHIDE (JAPAN)
Ishide is a native of Tokyo, and describes himself as "a bee who has visited many flowers." He began dancing in 1984 as a student of Ishii Mitsutaka and Hijikata Tatsumi. He performed in Hijikata, Tatsumi's “Tohoku Kabuki Keikaku 2 and 4” in 1985, with Tanaka, Min. In the wake of Hijikata's death, he danced with Saburo Teshigawara's company KARAS, performing in various cities of France, including Paris, Bordeaux and Aix-en-Provence. Eventually moving to Paris for three years, he created the dance group “Ensemble Naka” with Ea Sola and Francois Evangeristi. Since 1990, Ishide has performed primarily and extensively as a solo improvisational dancer, working with musicians of many styles (such as percussionist Masa Sasaki in Hannover, Berlin and Paris). He has toured Korea, Japan, USA, Mexico and Europe. Highlights include: “Flesh of Showa 2” at Japan Dance Festival, International Chon-Chun Festival in Seoul, Korea, and the International World Culture Festival in Mexico City.

YUKO KASEKI (JAPAN)
Yuko Kaseki studied Butoh and the Performing Arts in HBK Braunschweig with Anzu Furukawa, and danced in her company, Dance Butter Tokio and Verwandlungsamt from 1989 to 2000. She and Marc Ates founded cokaseki in 1995. Their dance works are based on Butoh, western contemporary dance and performance techniques to create precise, dreamlike dance theater. She has collaborated with a variety of musicians (Axel Doerner, Aki Takase, Antonis Anissegos, Andrea Neumann, Johannes Wallmann, and others), and visual artists (Chiharu Shiota, Francois Giovangigli, Soren Do and others). Her solo works have been performed throughout Europe, Japan and the USA. In 2001, she began collaborating with inkBoat (San Francisco), creating choreographed and improvised works. Since 2004, she has organized and performed in the Improvisational Series: “Ammo-Nite Gig,” with musicians, dancers and performers from Japan, USA and Europe.

GEORGIA LIFSHER (NEW YORK)
Georgia Lifsher recently graduated from NYU's Tisch School of the Arts as a drama major. At NYU she studied at the Experimental Theatre Wing and also traveled to the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London. She has also studied and performed theatre and dance with the Patrivadi Theatre in Bangkok, Thailand. She has also written/directed several independent films.

SHARLA MEESE (NEW YORK)
Sharla Meese’s Recent NY work includes: Ariel in The Tempest for RIRA, Viola/Sebastian in Five Twelfths at the Producer’s Club, Duncan/Witch in Macbeth at TSI Studios, and Ms. Yellowjacket in Supernatural Breakroom at Under St. Mark’s Theater. Training Methods have incorporated the following: MMC, BADA, & SITI. Sharla would like to thank Ximena and the ensemble for this wonderful opportunity.

DAIJI MEGURO (JAPAN)
Daiji Meguro, a member of Ko Murobushi's three-man Edge Company since 2004, is emerging as one of the most thoughtful voices in international Butoh. With Edge, Mr. Meguro has toured Korea, Canada, the United States, and Tunisia; and participated in several premieres, including the US Premiere of Handsome Blue Sky at Japan Society in NYC. He is founder of NUDE Dance Company, in which he explores the evolving meanings of butoh through his own choreography, expanding and stretching the possibilities of this dance form. He also performed at the 2002 JADE Festival's Hijikata Memorial.

SHIGE MORIYA (JAPAN/ NEW YORK)
Shige Moriya, born in 1967, originally from Kyoto and Kobe, Japan, is now based in New York. Shige works as an installation artist, creating large, translucent installations, constructed with filmy sculptures of transparent fabric. These clusters form a landscape for projected images of color and light. His videography has been featured in theater/dance productions, and a substantial amount of his work is performed live in an interdisciplinary environment, often in collaboration with musicians, dancers and other visual artists. His work has been presented in Japan, Finland, Vietnam, Germany and the US. Initially working as an assistant curator at the Cast Iron Gallery in Soho (1993), he went on to co-found CAVE three years later. Curator of the gallery program of CAVE for the last 10 years, much of his time has been devoted to supporting and presenting the work of emerging visual/multi-disciplinary artists. Moriya is co-curator of the New York Butoh Festival and a core member of GARNICA LEIMAY AcTS LAB and CAVEnsemble.

HANNAH STONE (NEW YORK)
Hannah Stone hails from Louisville KY and is excited to partake in this her first and most wonderful NY production of A Timeless Kaidan. She is a graduate of the University of Utah's Actor Training Program in Salt Lake City, Utah. Her favorite roles include Christopher(On The Razzel), Carol (Oleanna), Squeaky Fromme (Assassins), Jiro Kyogan (Monster Spider), and Porter(Macbeth). She'd like to give thanks to all her friends, family, and teachers that have helped make this possible

Celeste Hastings is a NYC based choreographer, performer, costume and soundscape designer, and experimental videographer. Her work fuses dance, theater and Japanese butoh. A lead dancer for 12 years with postmodern butoh company Poppo and Gogo Boys, she has collaborated with many artists/companies such as Richard Move, Noemie Lafrance, Anemone Dance Theater, Black Moon Theater, Moeno Wakamatsu, Nadine Helstroffer, Mariko Sanjo, Accion Colectiva in Venezuela, Tetsuro Fukuhara and Eri Majima (Japan), director Antonio Lai (Poland and NY), co-editor with filmmaker Simon Grome, and will work in Akira Kasai’s new project for the NY Butoh Festival 2007 at Japan Society. Recent major works include “Amazonas”, “Nuit”, “Towards Dreams and Madness” seen in New York Howl, Dumbo and CRS’s ‘Tribute to Butoh’ Festivals, at Pact Zollverein in Germany and Paris. Is director/choreographer of the satirical group The Butoh Rockettes. She is American, born and grew up in Venezuela.

See homepages: http://home.earthlink.net/~celestehastings/, http://home.earthlink.net/~butohrockettes/

TATSURO ISHII is a dance critic and Professor at Keio University in Tokyo. He writes dance reviews for the Japanese newspaper Asahi Shimbun, Dance Magazine, and others. He is the author of such books as The Spirit Journey of the Body Expression, Sexuality of Transvestism, Essays on Female Transvestism, Asia, the Cosmos of Journey and Body, Polysexual Love, Acrobatics and Dance, The Climactic Point of Body, etc. He has served as Judge of Cairo International Experimental Theater Festival in Cairo, Egypt (2002), Director of Butoh Festival in Seoul, Korea (2005), and Judge of Toyota Choreography Award (2006).

JEFF JANISHESKI has trained in butoh since 1989 – including three years with Kazuo Ohno – and Japanese noh theatre since 1992; he is also the co-founder and co-director of the CAVE New York Butoh Festival. He has directed at Chashama, the Cherry Lane Theatre, GAle GAtes and Judson Memorial Church in New York; the KO Festival of Performance in Amherst; and various theatres in Tokyo. He is also Associate Artistic Director at the Off-Broadway theatre Classic Stage Company.

AKIRA KASAI (Japan) has been called the “Nijinsky of butoh” because of the stunning energy and concentration of his wild improvisational dances. In the 1960s, he studied with Kazuo Ohno, one of the founders of butoh, and in 1971 started his own butoh company, Tenshi-kan. He moved to Germany in 1979 and trained there for six years in eurhythmy. Since his return to Japan, he has cultivated his own highly idiosyncratic style of dance, pushing the envelope of butoh by mixing in elements as diverse as kabuki and hip-hop.

Erin has trained with Butoh masters Ko Murobushi, Takuya Muramatsu, Tetsuro Fukuhara, and Diego Pinon and employs techniques from Butoh, qigong, gymnastics, farming, cabaret dancing, and performance action-theater to create new works, ways of moving, and performance installation pieces that comment on the human condition and its relationship to the environment and society. As a choreographer and performer, she has created and collaborated on site-specific dance performances in gardens, galleries, warehouse spaces, boats, and theaters in the U.S, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, and Thailand. Her solo performances have been presented by Galerie Emmanuel Perrotin in Miami, Kultur im Spannwerk in Berlin, and Pseudo, Cave Art Space, the HOWL Festival, and Movement Research at Judson Church in New York. A recent collaboration with New Media Artist, Mariam Ghani and composer Qasim Nagri produced the site-specific dance video installation, Fugitive Refrains, premiering at Akademie Schloss Solitude in Stuttgart. As a founding member of the multidisciplinary, multimedia collective RansomCorp, active from 1999-2002, she toured warehouse spaces across the U.S. and Europe and created commissioned work for LaMama in New York and Schloss Broellin in Germany. As a dancer she has performed for choreographers including Erika Hassan, Tetsuro Fukuhara, Atsushi Takenouchi, and Takuya Muramatsu and at venues including Theater for the New City and Gale Gates Gallery, and Smack Mellon. Contact: erin@kstudionyc.net

SHINICHI IOVA KOGA (San Francisco) is Artistic Director of the San Francisco-based company, inkBoat. His work is a surreal, darkly comic collision between dance, theater and cinema. The San Francisco Bay Guardian wrote, “Koga combines various performance techniques, including butoh and improvisation, in a deceptively simple, thematically rich narrative… a vivid yet nearly wordless work of unusual subtlety and force."

TAKETERU KUDO trained under two of butoh’s most famous dancers, Akiko Motofuji (the widow of butoh’s co-creator Tatsumi Hijikata) and the famed butoh group Sankai Juku (with whom he danced for 5 years and toured internationally). Kudo left Sankai Juku to form his own company in 1997 and began to work with free-jazz musicians from Japan’s urban enclave. His work is visceral, musical and poetic.

RALPH LEE is a mask maker and theater director. His company, the Mettawee Theater Company tours New York State in summers and performs at St. John the Divine in September. He has made masks for distinguished chorographers such as Erick Hawkins and Jean Erdman and was an actor in the Open Theater for many years. He has been artist in residence in many universities and performing spaces and is a recipient of a Guggenheim Award for Excellence.

Benjamin Marcantoni is a Puerto Rican countertenor opera singer, actor and composer. He is known for his dramatic connection to the material and a voice of uncommon size and range. Even untrained, his boy soprano caught the ear of his school's music teacher early on. He went on to study voice as a tenor at InterAmerican University of Puerto Rico, and then received his graduate degree from University of Nevada, Reno. He came to New York City in late 1999 where he is well known in the underground and experimental theater scene. He is currently a member of the internationally renowned Great Jones Repertory Company of La MaMa, E.T.C.

MEI-BE Whatever is an evolving experimental art ensemble based in New York City. Current investigations fuse media technologies with contemporary dance. Staging a variety of multi-media events, MEI-BE Whatever explores the ever-changing relationship between the body and the technology, the real and the virtual world. Artistic Director/Choreographer Mei-Yin Ng is a recipient of NYFA Choreography Fellowship 2004 and a selected participant in the 2004 Multimedia Forum of the Monaco Dance Forum. Works has been received support from New York Foundation of the Art, Manhattan Community Arts Fund & Jerome Foundation.

Juan Merchan is an actor and dancer, performing in NYC for over 13 years. Merchan has shown original work in over 15 NYC venues. He has trained in Butoh with Yumiko Yoshioka, Shinichi Momo Koga, Kokoro Dance, Ko Murobushi, Katsura Kan and Diego Pinon. Merchan is also a Co-Founder and Co-Curator of the New York Butoh Festival.

Ko Murobushi trained and performed with butoh’s creator Tatsumi Hijikata and was a founding member of Dairakudakan, the longest-running butoh company. Murobushi also founded influential companies Ariadone and Sebi, bringing company productions to introduce many European audiences to butoh. Based in Japan, he tours internationally with his Ko&Edge Co. and as a highly sought-after solo performer and teacher throughout Europe and the Americas.

Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion) is originally from Osaka, Japan. In 2006 he performed in 80 cities in 7 countries and collaborated with 163 artists worldwide. In the past 10 years he has released nearly 50 recordings on CD. He has created his own instrumentation, effectively inventing many instruments and extended techniques. He utilizes drumset, bowed gongs, cymbals, singing bowls, metal objects, bells, and various sticks and bows to create an intense, organic music that defies category or genre. His music is based in improvised/ experimental music, jazz, free jazz, rock, and noise, yet retains the sense of space and beauty found in traditional Japanese folk music. In addition to live solo and ensemble performances he works as a sound designer for film and television. He also teaches Masterclasses and Workshops at the University level. He also heads H&H Production, an independent record label and recording studio based in Easton, Pennsylvania. He was selected as a performing artist for the Pennsylvania Performing Artist on Tour (PennPat) roster as well as a Bronx Arts Council Individual Artist grant.

Kristin Narcowich (NEW YORK) studied dance her whole life, including a BFA in Modern Dance (Univ. of the Arts). Performed with Ausdrukstanz DanceTheater, directed by a Mary Wigman graduate; also studied voice privately, singing with Choral Arts Society and the NWMahler Chorus, while dancing 2 yrs. w/Dappin Butoh (Seattle). Returning to the NE, developed duets with Moeno Wakamatsu, musicians WOZ, Toshi Makihara, while completing an MA in Religion(Asian)-PhD. Program (Temple U.), awarded a TA to teach courses on Death and Dying. Participated in the first months of Akira Kasai’s private school program in Tokyo (2006), and is now an artist/writer/editor in residence at CAVE.

Since co-founding Degenerate Art Ensemble (formerly The Young Composers Collective) in 1993, Nishimura has produced a consistent stream of original and adventurous works combining physical theater and butoh dance with live experimental music. Now she is the experimental vocalist for Degenerate Art Ensemble’s big band garage orchestra, with whom she has performed numerous Seattle shows and four European Tours over the past four years.

YOSHITO OHNO (Japan) is the son of butoh legend Kazuo Ohno and is a renowned dancer and teacher. His career has literally spanned the entire history of butoh: as a young man, he performed in 1959 in founder Tatsumi Hijikata’s scandalous first butoh performance. After dancing in Hijikata’s early pieces as well as performing his own solo works, Yoshito Ohno stopped performing for over a decade. He returned to dance in 1985 in the The Dead Sea, a work made in collaboration with his father. Since 1986, he has directed all of Kazuo Ohno’s performances, as well as creating solo work and teaching.

Amos Pinhasi was born in Israel. In New York he has presented his work since 1985 and has been produced by DTW's Fresh Tracks, The 40Up Project, Joyce Soho,Dancenow, Dumbo Dance Festival,and Danspace Project. He has toured his solo work in Switzerland,Austria, Germany and Israel. He teaches dance improvisation and yoga internationally.

Based in New York City, Pracjek works in the areas of creative writing, Adult Basic Education, literacy through the arts, and dance theatre performance. Pracjek’s work has been seen in community arts festivals, The Mulberry Street Theatre, The Puffin Room, La Mama, and WOW Café Theatre. Pracjek holds a Master’s degree in Performance Studies from NYU and works as Managing Director of the New York Butoh Festival.

John Solt is a poet and independent scholar who has been Associate-in-Research at the Edwin O. Reischauer Institute of Japanese Studies at Harvard University since 1990. He was among the first to introduce Kazuo Ohno and butoh to USA academia in the early 1980s, and produced—in collaboration with Jeff Janisheski—the first Kazuo Ohno video festivals in Massachusetts in the early 1990s. To commemorate Ohno’s centenary, Solt’s Highmoonoon is holding six video festivals—three in Bangkok (Thammasat University, Mahidol University, Butoh-Coop Thailand), one in Kyoto (Doshisha University), one in Massachusetts (Amherst College) and this finale in New York (CUNY).

Atsushi Takenouchi joined Butoh dance company "Hoppo-Butoh-ha" in Hokkaido in 1980. His last performance with the company, "Takazashiki"(1984),was assisted by Tatsumi Hijikata. He has been working on his own Jinen Butoh since 1986 and created solos "Tanagokoro", "Ginkan", "Itteki" as a universal expression of nature, earth, and ancient times and his impressions of the moment, formulated from the people around him, and the environment. He toured Japan between 1996 and 1999. In 1999 he toured Jinen Butoh "Sun & Moon" and led Butoh workshops in Europe and Asia for six months. Since autumn 2002 he has been mainly based in Europe for one-year arts fellowship funded by a Japanese government, and has been working on Butoh dance collaboration project with dancers and actors in France, Poland and other countries.

KOICHI & HIROKO TAMANO are the directors of Harupin-Ha Butoh Dance Theatre, which they started in 1972. Former students of butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata – who called Koichi his “bow-legged Nijinsky” – the Tamanos’ devotion to the mastery of dance is expressed through works that are at once beautiful, graceful, shocking and grotesque. Koichi has worked closely with numerous musicians, visual artists and designers, most notably, with Grammy award winning musician Kitaro in their acclaimed collaboration Tamayura. Audiences in Europe, the United States and Japan have lauded Harupin-Ha’s captivating performances. Since 1979, Harupin-Ha has been based in San Francisco, and the Tamanos have been largely responsible for the spread of butoh throughout North America.

Vangeline is a dancer, teacher and choreographer from France. She is currently the Artistic Director of the Vangeline Theater, a Post Modern Butoh Dance company firmly rooted in the tradition of Japanese Butoh. The Vangeline Theater’s mission statement is to educate the public through performances and workshops, and to utilize Dance and various forms of artistic explorations as healing tools for our community. Venues and festivals where Vangeline’s choreographed works have been shown include Galapagos Art Space, PS122 Performance Space, Theater for The New City, The Gates in Central Park, the Clemente Soto Velez Cultural Center, Links Hall Chicago, the Howl Festival, the Puffin Room, Art in Odd Places, and the Lower East Side Festival for the Arts.

Jorge Vazquez Vilarreal was born and lives in Mexico. He started his artistic studies at the National Conservatory of Music in 1999. He joined Diego Pinon's Butoh Ritual Mexicano in 2003, and has also trained in Butoh with Akira Kasai and Natsue Nakajima. He studies Kabuki with Irene Akiko Iida.

MOENO WAKAMATSU is a Japanese-American dancer who has trained in Cunningham, ballet and butoh. An emerging butoh choreographer of incredible subtlety and strength, her goal is “to suspend within the moment where inner desire meets outer phenomena.”

YUKIO WAGURI (Japan) was born in Tokyo in 1952. In 1972, he became the pupil of Tatsumi Hijikata. He established his own group Yukio Waguri + Kohzensha, releasing solo and group dance works in Tokyo. He has also inherited and developed Hijikata’s method, which evokes body image through language. He is known for his solid and lithe body, beautiful shape, and rich expressive power. He also collaborates closely with musical and theatrical circles and is highly praised as a dance designer and a stage director. He released the CD-ROM, Butoh-Kaden in 1998.

Nancy Zendora performed and studied in Japan with Tatsumi Hijikata and other Butoh, Kyogen and Kabuki artists in the 80's. Although she had already been a choreographer before going to Japan, the experience had a profound effect on her work. She has continued to create meditative works of inner intensity. As director of the Zendora Dance Company, both her solo and group works have been seen in festivals, theaters, gardens, galleries and alternate spaces in Asia, Central and South America Europe and the US.

In addition to those local dancers mentioned, the festival will feature a variety of emerging US-based choreographers in a series of performances at CAVE.

Sennichimae Blue Sky Dance Club (Japan) create satiric dances that mix the Japanese pop of Hello Kitty and the punk aesthetics of butoh into a wild blend. Founded in 2000 and based in Osaka, this butoh-based all female troupe seeks to uncover new, original physical expression with a pop sensibility. Their choreography is born out of carefully observing elements from the physical memory of modern life and bringing them into new light. Their works are performed at shrines, schools and other alternative spaces. Sennichimae embarked upon their first international tour at the Extreme Orient Festival 2001 in Paris.

Michael Philip Manheim has been a professional photographer since 1969. Michael Philip Manheim's work has been exhibited throughout the United States and in Germany, Greece and Italy. His work has been featured in magazines such as Zoom (U.S. and Italy), Photographers International (Taiwan), La Fotografia (Spain), Black and White (United States), and numerous other publications. Manheim's photographs are held in public and private collections. He has been Artist in Residence at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine and Phillips Exeter Academy in Exeter, New Hampshire. Manheim is based along the Atlantic coast in Beverly, Massachusetts.

Miro Ito’s multidisciplinary work defies the boundaries between genders, cultures, and genres and is the outcome of her own spiritual quest through Germany, Japan and USA. Currently, Miro Ito is also involved in media and art, book projects uniting Eastern and Western spiritual culture. Having so far participated in a wide variety of notable projects - ranging from art, publications, documentary to advertising - Ito's work has appeared in many renowned international magazines. After majoring in Aesthetics and Fine Art History at Tokyo's Keio University, she studied photography at Essen University in Germany, while concurrently embarking on her path as a photo-artist. Ito is a member of the Photographic Society of Japan (PSJ), the New York Art Directors Club as well as the Japan Society for Art and History of Photography (JSAHP).