Butoh/ACTION

These performances will bring to a close a two-week residency and workshop, during which movement artists Shinichi Momo Iova-Koga and Cassie Terman will explore what comes of colliding Butoh and Action Theatre methodologies. While the two traditions tend to produce performances that look very different from one another, the two share some of the same philosophical underpinnings. This residency and these performances will seek to discover where the two traditions may speak to one another and in in doing so, re-invigorate the creative process.

“Mr. Koga and Ms. Terman are sure, charismatic performers. May [they] soon perform again together.” — Jennifer Dunning, New York Times (1/9/06)

“inkBoat is at the forefront of a new generation. Founder Shinichi Koga creates startlingly imaginitave psychological journeys of humor and horror...” —San Francisco Chronicle (1/29/06)

“It's always heartening...to find a young maverick artist so gifted that audiences seem to discover him through natural buzz about his talent. Such has been the case with Shinichi Iova-Koga.... Like many of his generation, Iova-Koga has cast off butoh's calcified clichés -- the shaved head, the white body paint, the glacial pacing and practically patented look of horrified despair -- and yet retained its expressionistic, grotesque essence.” — Rachel Howard, San Francisco Chronicle (1/26/07)

Action Theater is a training system in physical theater improvisation that builds vocal, verbal, and physical performance skills, hones awareness and increases expressive range. Action Theater uses embodied presence as a doorway into the agility of a vast imagination. The exercises incorporated are simple, playful and challenging and work on a deep level to expand moment-to-moment awareness and its relationship to both action and being. How do we fully experience how we are? The distracting power of judgement and fear is calmed as one's curiosity and compassion for the smallest moment is roused, however lovely or terrifying it might be. Central elements to the practice include listening, composition, musicality, alignment between form and feeling, the beauty of lost detail, the inhabiting of mercurial energies, and a way of relaxing into the active nature of time and change with eloquence, precision, and passion.

Shinichi Iova-Koga works with image and kinesthetic response to environment. In his words: “I want the process of creating performance work to expand and inform the life of the dancer (aka: the human). Excellent technical abilities are not enough to move us. The development of dance needs to support spirit (I take “spirit” to mean both the liveliness and the essence of a dancer). I want to find the core reason for movement, whether kinesthetic and imagistic. Using imagery to create the movement form, the body is asked to move according to that interior impulse, not according to exterior form. At the same time, some movements and shapes carry a strong kinesthetic “message” in the body. Work with necessary tension, releasing the unnecessary to let the dance become permeable and malleable. We work from the center (tanden) to move the far-reaching limbs. Develop listening in relation to time, space and motion.”

Originally a photographer, filmmaker and theater actor/director, Shinichi Iova-Koga (born 1968) entered the life of Butoh dance in 1991 (initially through Akeno Ashikawa and then consistently through Hiroko Tamano). In 1998, he founded the performance company inkBoat. Shinichi's productions, both solo and ensemble, have been experienced throughout the North American Continent, Europe and Japan. Productions collide between dance, theater and cinema to illuminate the personal existence entering or exiting the stage (living room, street, screen or…). Shinichi has collaborated intensively with cokaseki (Germany: 2004-present), Yumiko Yoshioka and TEN PEN CHii (Germany: 1996-2001), Do Theatre (Russia: 1997-present), Minako Seki (Germany: 2001-present), Shadowlight Theatre (SF: 1993-1997), Degenerate Art Ensemble (Seattle: 2001), and often creates improvisation evenings with longtime production collaborators Yuko Kaseki, Sten Rudstrøm and Cassie Terman. Shinichi and inkBoat have received funding from Rockefeller Foundation, Irvine Dancemaker Grant, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, Creative Work Fund, Zellerbach Family Fund, Barkley Fund, American Composers Forum, Meet the Composer, CASH grant and the California Arts Council. Shinichi was an Wattis Artist in Residence at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in 2002. inkBoat and cokaseki won “Outstanding Performance” from the Isadora Duncan Awards for the production of “Ame to Ame” in 2004 as well as the award for “Visual Design” for “Heaven’s Radio” in 2003.

Cassie Terman (photo by Eric Koziol) is a performer, writer, and teacher. Raised in California she arrived to theater in her early twenties by way of dance. Originally trained in ballet and modern technique she began an intensive practice in Action Theater™ with Ruth Zaporah in 1991 and since then has been improvising and creating original physical theater work on stages from San Francisco to Berlin. Fascination with language led to an MFA in Writing and Poetics from Naropa University, a small Buddhist college, which then influenced her theater work on many levels. In 1999 she became a member of Shinichi Iova-Koga's inkBoat company and was introduced to Butoh dance and a starkly imagistic theater-making that resonated with an ongoing delight in the surreal and darker world of fairytale, myth, and the profoundly mysterious nature of being. Since moving to New York in 2004 she has continued solo performances as well as collaborating with such talented artists as Tanya Calamoneri & Company SoGoNo, composer Keren Rosenbaum's Reflex Ensemble, Heather Harpham, Shinichi Iova-Koga, and the Action Theater Ensemble. Current and past collaborators also include Owen Walker, Sten Rudstrom, Sabine von der Tann, Leigh Evans, Katie Yates, Max Regan, and Etiquette (Mary Lois Hare and Linda Carr).