Presented by Theater For The New City, Crystal Field Artistic Director. Produced by CAVE

Note: On November 6 and 7 (Tue and Wed) Pre-show tea 7:30pm.
On November 8 (Thurs) Pre-show tea 7:00pm.
And On November 6 (Tue) post-show Director/Artist Talk
On November 7 (Wed) post show Festival Reception

Integrating butoh dance with video installation and live music, "A Timeless Kaidan" is an interdisciplinary performance that explores human fear. Created, choreographed and directed by Ximena Garnica (Garnica LEIMAY AcTS LAB), it brings together a group of three Japanese butoh dancers with nine young New York-based performers in an incandescent interdisciplinary performance. The Japanese group includes Tokyo-based dancers Takuya Ishide (a former member of Butoh co-creator Tatsumi Hijikata’s company), Daiji Meguro (currently a young member of the company of Ko Murobushi), and the Berlin-based dancer Yuko Kaseki (former principal dancer of Anzu Furukawa's company). The New York group includes Mariko Endo, Khristal Curtis, I-Lien Ho, Hazuki Homma, Jonothon Howard, Georgia Lifsher, Sharla Meese, Kristin Narcowich, and Hannah Stone. The dance performance is supported by a design team composed of New York-based video and installation artist Shige Moriya and musicians Jeremy Slater and Gregory Reynolds with an additional sound collage from the New York band Bloody Panda.

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.

Director Ximena Garnica wishes to acknowledge the following individuals, foundations and inspiration sources for their various contributions to this project:

A Timeless Kaidan is partially sponsored by The Japan Foundation through the Performing Arts JAPAN program.

The Byrd Hoffman Watermill Foundation. This piece was created while in residency at the Robert Wilson Watermill Center.

The Association of Hispanic Arts through The Urban Artist Initiative program (UAI/NYC) assisted in the realization of this piece.

Jorge Luis Borges, poems and labyrinths and the Greek myth of Ariadna’s Thread have inspired the creation of A Timeless Kaidan and have made possible to connect all the loose treads.

Composer/director Billy Fox's investigations of Japanese ghost stories served as the preliminary inspiration for Garnica's A Timeless Kaidan.

Billy Fox initial grant writing was instrumental in the inception of this production. Mr. Fox is the composer/director of the Kitsune Ensemble, an improvising chamber ensemble performing original music inspired by arcane facets of Japanese Culture.

CAVE Organization sponsorship made the realization of this international project possible.

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“Kizamu” means to carve very important experiences or memories into the body. Takenouchi dances the memory of the space, air, and sounds, which he has encountered in the various corners of the world and has carved into his body. Performing with live music by Hiroko Komiya, they collaborate in bringing alive memories in the moment of space and sound.

ATSUSHI TAKENUCHI joined Hoppo-Butoh-ha in Hokkaido, Japan in 1980. He has been developing his own “Jinen Butoh” since 1986, touring and teaching extensively throughout Japan, Eastern and Western Europe, Asia and Australia. His work is concerned with universal expressions of nature, earth, and ancient life.

Kudo explores questions he has been holding since the time of his debut: conflict between the folkloric blood and the wilderness of modernity. Those will connect with his yearning for dramatic structure, the making of total theater by a single man.

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.

“I am discovered by dancing- in addition I am judged. When my image is not real, my flesh discloses it honestly.” A former dancer of Tatsumi Hijikata’s, Ishide has developed as a solo improvisational dancer. Ishide’s dances are characterized by a sense of risk derived from spontaneous constitution of his inner images.

TAKUYA ISHIDE was a member of Tatsumi Hijikata’s company, performing in Hijikata’s last work, Tohoku Kabuki Project, in 1985. He presents a highly unique and individual style that abandons traditional techniques and forms.

Sumida River is the haunting tale of a woman in search of her stolen child. Fujiwara’s delicately shaded performance of this Butoh work explores a mother’s deeply moving and compelling journey. Internationally acclaimed Butoh choreographer Natsu Nakajima has created this spellbinding solo interpretation of the renowned 15th century Japanese noh play especially for the remarkable Canadian performer, Denise Fujiwara.

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, Fujiwara continues to develop original solo and ensemble dance performance.

"A butoh dance of remarkable purity. - This noble allegorical tale of great depth, brilliantly brought together by dancer Fujiwara and choreographer Nakajima."
--Valerie Lehmann, Le Devoir, Montreal