Northwest Butoh Festival LLC

The Northwest Butoh Festival

The Northwest Butoh Festival is May 13 - 16, 2026 at New Expressive Works (810 SE Belmont St.) in Portland, Oregon. There will be twelve performances over three nights, 14 -16, and four workshops on the 13 -16.Performance and workshop tickets are sliding scale.
Performances: Patron $25, General $20, Artist/Senior/Student $15, Access $10
Workshops: Patron $40, General $30, Artist/Senior/Student $20, Access $10Full Pass - $165.50
Just Performances (all three Performances) - $59.50
Just Workshops (All four workshops) - $116.00Performers include Joan Laage/Kogut Butoh, Julie Becton Gillum, Minja Mertanen, Vanessa Skantze, Iván Espinosa and Co, Ash Pillar, Arlo King, Amapola, Salty Xi Jie Ng, Olga Kravtsova, Monel Chang and Didi (Freddi) Wyss.Workshop teachers will be Minja Mertanen, Vanessa Skantze, Julie Becton Gillum and Joan Laage.Performance ScheduleThursday May 14th at 8:00pm
1. Minja Mertanen
2. Didi (Freddi) Wyss
3. Arlo King
4. Vanessa SkantzeFriday May 15th at 8:00pm
1. Olga Kravtsova
2. Monel Chang
3. Bowels of the Earth by Ivân Espinosa and Co
4. Joan Laage/Kogut ButohSaturday May 16th at 8:00pm
1. Amapola
2. Ash Pillar
3. Salty Xi Jie Ng
4. Julie Becton GillumWorkshop ScheduleWednesday May 13, 6-10:00pm with Minja Mertanen (Finland)
Minja Mertanen (1981) is a helsinki based dancer and a live artist. She has graduated as a dance teacher, dance- and movement therapist, a yoga instructor and Somatic Movement Therapist. She has been working with Butoh over 20 years performing and teaching in 20 countries. She is the founder of Be(a)ware Butoh Festival at Helsinki and co-director of Why Butoh Festival in Turku.Thursday May 14 10-2:00pm with Vanessa Skantze (Seattle)
Vanessa became a student of Jinen Butoh founder Atsushi Takenouchi in 2003. She has trained extensively with Mari Osanai; and drawn deep from workshops with Natsu Nakajima, Seisaku, and Yuko Kaseki. She has created numerous solo and group Butoh works and has taught regularly for 20 years.Friday May 15th 10-2:00pm with Joan Laage/Kogut Butoh (Seattle)
Embodying the Spirt: the body finds its way
Butoh workshop taught by Joan Laage/Kogut Butoh
This workshop explores innovative ways to create personal movement, emphasizing the space and stillness between movements within our bodies, and the process of erasing and re-creating the body through guided improvisation with nature imagery. The special focus for this workshop is working with the haunting and evocative paintings of Polish artist Beksinski, whose body of work greatly inspired Joan while collaborating with the much-respected Warsaw-based butoh artist Sylwia Hanff. Joan’s butoh practice and art are influenced by the Ohnos and Yoko Ashikawa in Tokyo, Atsushi Takenouchi JINEN Butoh in Europe and Joan’s background as a Tai Chi practitioner and professional gardener.Saturday May 16th 10-2:00pm with Julie Becton Gillum (Asheville, NC)
The theme of this workshop, “From Rascal to Reverent,” is based on a quote by Skins, a student who described their experience in the 2025 workshop at Earthdance. Dancers will be guided to use aspects of butoh dance to explore ideas, create movements, and embody different characters. Our material is the essence of our bodies: water, air, bone, muscle, and skin—leading us into form and texture through a flow of sensations in space, time, and dynamics. The training will include exercises from the Noguchi Taiso water body practice, along with specific techniques, images, and forms to foster coordination, freedom and range of movement. Our goal as dancers is to break free from the typical, cliched, and traditional—to push beyond the conventions that have kept us bound since losing our childhood inhibitions. Movement lessons will encourage playfulness with our inner rascal and discovery of what we revere in ourselves and the universe.

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Northwest Butoh Festival 2026

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Northwest Butoh Festival LLC supports and presents dance events and workshops with a focus on Butoh in Portland Oregon.Get in touch at [email protected]

Butoh Workshops With Carl Annala

“I began studying Butoh dance in the mid 90’s after having seen the inspirational dance film Butoh: The Dance of Darkness at an early screening in the late 80’s. My approach is inspired by nature, the dark terroir of the pacific northwest, the sea, the forest, its creatures and conditions. I also pull from my background as a visual artist/teacher and bandleader. My Butoh learning lineage comes from both streams, Hijikata and Ohno. My lighthouse teachers, Yumiko Yoshioka and Seisaku, however, are in the Hijikata camp.”Carl will lead 2 hour workshops on the first/second Sundays of the month beginning in January at New Expressive Works, 810 SE Belmont St., in Portland. Reserve your space at [email protected] - drop-ins also welcome, no experience necessary. Sliding. Classes on Sundays at 1:00-3:00pm are on 2/8, 3/1, 4/5, 5/3 and 6/7.

Yumiko Yoshioka will teach an intensive series of workshops August 4th - 7th and will perform her work “100 Light Years of Solitude” on Saturday the 8th at 8:00 pm at New Expressive Works, 810 SE Belmont St., in Portland. Tickets on sale Spring 2026 via the N.E.W. website."100 Light Years of Solitude" by Yumiko YoshiokaFollowing Yumiko's acclaimed solo Before the Dawn, this is the second part of her trilogy From 1 to 100.Inspired by Garcia Marquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude to explore a state of solitude Yumiko dances the life of a unique creature, born on a planet 100 light years away from ours. Imagining that this creature is the only one of its species on that planet, it enjoys unfolding its life until it realizes its destiny... to exist in solitude.Yumiko says, "In my childhood, I was always fascinated by the imaginary creatures and monsters of fairy tales. Butoh, a dance of metamorphosis, helps me to explore this imaginary world, and make something invisible visible."