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Vangeline Theater and the New York Butoh Institute in association with Triskelion Arts present a performance Hitohana Hitosekai (One Flower One World) and the workshop Make Visible by Butoh Dancer Moeno Wakamatsu, April 9-14

by Michelle Tabnick
February 13, 2019
Triskelion Arts - Muriel Schulman Theater
106 Calyer Street

(Formerly at 118 North 11th Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211)
Brooklyn, NY 10016
718-389-3473
Vangeline Theater and the New York Butoh Institute present, in association with Triskelion Arts, performance Hitohana Hitosekai (One Flower One World) and workshop Make Visible by Butoh dancer Moeno Wakamatsu. The performance will be held on April 9, 2019 at 8pm at Triskelion Arts, 106 Calyer St, Brooklyn, NY 11222, and the workshop will run from April 11-14, 2019 at varying times and locations. Tickets for the performance are $18 General Admission and can be purchased at www.vangeline.com/calendar-of-upcoming-events/2019/4/9/moeno-wakamatsu-performance. Tickets for the workshop range from $50-$295 and can be purchased at www.vangeline.com/calendar/2019/4/11/butoh-workshop-with-moeno-wakamatsu

In one flower there is a world. In one moment there is an eternity.

The title of the piece Hitohana Hitosekai (One Flower One World) originally comes from the Buddhist teachings: 

One flower is one world.
One blade of grass is one paradise.
One leaf is buddhahood,
One grain of sand becomes heaven.
One piece of ground becomes pure land
One laughter is a connection,
One desire becomes stillness.

Moeno Wakamatsu creates and performs original dance works influenced by Japanese Butoh and her Buddhist upbringing. She writes: "Rather than to "create" a dance piece and give it a theme, I approach the dance where the piece will grow out of a dance, and the theme will be harvested by each audience.  It is like to let a flower bloom, but we do not know what flower it will be for each audience.  Each flower is an entire life, and in each life is an entire world. To make such approach, I attempt to give up the self, to give up expression, to let the art be what remains when self-expression is removed."

"To see Moeno Wakamatsu on stage is to experience an oscillation between solidity and fluidity, to experience a poetry of appearance and disappearance."
- Lê Quan Ninh, Percussionist

"MAKE VISIBLE" WORKSHOP DATES AND TIMES:
Thursday, April 11, 7-10 pm, 55 Avenue C NYC 10009
Friday, April 12, 6-9 pm, 55 Avenue C NYC 10009
Saturday, April 13, 1 to 6pm, Cameo Studios, 307 West 43rd Street, Studio B
Sunday, April 14, 1-6pm, 55 Avenue C, NYC 10009

PRICES: 
FOUR DAY WORKSHOP
$265 Early bird (by March 1, 2019 - $295 after March 1)

SINGLE DAY (ON SALE UNTIL MARCH 1)
Thurday, April 11, 7-10 pm $50
Friday, April 12, 6-9 pm,  $50
Saturday, April 13, 1 to 6pm, $95
Sunday, April 14, 1-6pm,  $95

"MAKE VISIBLE" WORKSHOP WITH MOENO WAKAMATZU

Dance is like an apparition. It appears as if out of a void —- it does not explain, nor make meaning, nor bring salvation —- but it makes appear, as the dance, the invisible consciousness of the world. A large part of our reality is invisible to us because it is outside of our perception. We cannot see and we do not know. But the imperceptible can manifest itself as a phenomenon. Like a ripple on water by an invisible wind, the unseen has a way to make itself known. This phenomenon, when it occurs through our body, is dance. Through such dance, the audience too can experience what they might be unaware of. Such dance transforms their physical status and shift their perception and sense of time. With transformed perception, they see the world transformed. We do not create dance, we create a world - more truthfully, we make a world "visible". In the workshop, we address some fundamentals of how we could approach such dance - dance that can "reveal", "make visible". 1. Shift in time. To forget knowledge, to forget function. To give up hierarchy of values. 2. Ways of the Consciousness. 3. To Listen. 4. Training the 'whole self' - physical and awareness as one training. 5. Motivation. Emergence and direction of desire. 6. Externalizing the dance. 7. Imagination. 

Moeno Wakamatsu, born 1975 in Tokyo, in a house of a Jodoshu Buddhist temple in Asakusa. At age 10, her family moved abroad to Canada then to the United States. From age 6 to 17, she was classically trained in piano, and later in pipe organ. After age 18, she moved on to plastic art and architecture and moved to New York City. She encountered dance at the age 19. She studied at the School of Merce Cunningham in New York. Soon after, she extensively became involved in the Feldenkrais Method, and became a certified practitioner. In the same period, she became also much drawn to the work of several butoh artists. After graduating from The Cooper Union School of Architecture, she worked as an architect in New York City, while dancing and practicing the Feldenkrais Method. At age 27, she left the field of architecture to only pursue dance theatre as a solo artist. She presents her solo work and conducts workshops internationally. She is based in Normandy, France.
www.moeno.com
 
Vangeline (curator) is a teacher, dancer, and choreographer specializing in the Japanese postwar avant-garde movement form Butoh. She is the Artistic Director of the Vangeline Theater (New York), a dance company firmly rooted in the tradition of Japanese Butoh while carrying it into the 21st century, and the founder of the New York Butoh Institute.
 
Vangeline's work has been heralded in publications such as The New York Times ("captivating"), Los Angeles Times ("moves with the clockwork deliberation of a practiced Japanese Butoh artist") and LA Weekly, to name a few. Time OUT Chicago named Vangeline's "one of the best Dance Visits of 2011." More recently her BUTOH BEETHOVEN: Eclipse received critical acclaim in New York and was dubbed: "incredibly moving and powerful. It is clear that Vangeline is an artist who knows the darkness of Butoh well and has the incredible skill to make that darkness dance…Vangeline has the control and poise of a true master of Butoh."
With her all-female dance company, Vangeline's socially conscious performances tie together Butoh and activism. Vangeline is the winner of the 2015 Gibney Dance's Beth Silverman-Yam Social Action Award. Film projects include a starring role alongside actors James Franco and Winona Ryder in the feature film by director Jay Anania The Letter (2012-Lionsgate). She is pioneering a project exploring the intersection of Butoh and Neuroscience and has recently been invited to perform with/for Grammy Award Winning artists SKRILLEX and Esperanza Spalding. 

VANGELINE THEATER/ NEW YORK BUTOH INSTITUTE aims to preserve the legacy and integrity of Japanese Butoh while carrying the art form well into the future. The unique art of Butoh originated in post-World War II Japan as a reaction to the loss of identity caused by the westernization of Japanese culture, as well as a realization that ancient Japanese performing traditions no longer spoke to a contemporary audience. One of the major developments in contemporary dance in the latter half of the 20th century, Butoh combines dance, theater, improvisation and influences of Japanese traditional performing arts to create a unique performing art form that is both controversial and universal in its expression. The Vangeline Theater is home to the New York Butoh Institute, dedicated to the advancement of Butoh in the 21st century. www.vangeline.com
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