Queer Butoh 2023

Vangeline Theater/ New York Butoh Institute collaborates with The Brick Theater to present the seventh annual Queer Butoh, with performances from June 28-30, 2023 at 8pm at The Brick, 579 Metropolitan Avenue, Brooklyn. Tickets are $25 and available for purchase at https://ci.ovationtix.com/122/production/1163537. The shows will feature Abby Howard and Lela Besom (Arkansas) in Doll House; Scoop Slone in Origin (New York); Kori Koolman in Har Addam (New York/Israel); Yazmin Gonzalez & Andres Mauricio Sepulvda in Posturas (New York) and Tino Z. Mayers (New York) in Afro Child Soldier King. The running time is approximately two hours with an intermission. For more information, visit https://www.bricktheater.com/event/queer-butoh-2023/2023-06-28/.

About the Pieces
Doll House. Created by Lela &Abby (L&A productions from Arkansas), Doll House is a performance exploring the layers of inherited gender oppression and challenging the idea of gender norms, dress, and behavioral expectations while opening to the wild animal self and recognizing the majestic truth in nature and love.

Origin is the first installment of Scoop Slone’s three-part series titled States: Observations. Origin examines the state of quantum nothingness and the nature of existence at the atomic level, drawing reference to the origin of the (queer) self, which is evolving, and the manifestations and potential of that self amidst feelings of outsiderism, chameleonism, aloneism, and compartmentalization. The series is based upon the quantum physics principle that particles have potentials of reality, and their state of being is not chosen until they are observed.

Afro Child Soldier King by Tino Zoccoli Mayers shows the True Story of the Life and Death of a Queer, Black Anti-Hero. Like a Moses, this innocent orphan is abducted to the Last, Modern, Neo-colonial Devil’s Lair. The boy, intoxicated by Revenge and overdosed on Toxic Masculinity, makes his final Plea Bargain, releasing a universal shame, sorrow & redemption.

Har Addam by Kori Koolman.
The grandfather sleeps
The grandfather cries
The grandfather sings.

Posturas’ by Yazmin Gonzalez and Andres Mauricio Sepulvda is a 15-minute foray into the stances and performative postures of power and seduction that genders borrow from each other and implement to construct their sense of “the other.” The feminine and the masculine are explored with paced cynicism, scrutiny, and humor, in an attempt to liberate what it means to identify as a biological and bisexually operating woman on Earth. In ‘Posturas,’ the dancer relates to her shadow as the masculine force which guides her through determination and assertiveness and protects and sustains her sense of the feminine. The general unsafety around being “too feminine” is lived throughout.by Yazmin Gonzalez.