Blog Masonry

Book Chapter: “Gen X Butoh: LEIMAY Ensemble: Shige Moriya and Ximena Garnica”

“The work of this artistic duo has been vital to the contemporary development of butoh in New York…They have played a pivotal role as curators and community builders, and now as artists who are forging their own path, inspired by those they have encountered along the way.” “The New...Continued

10. Mar

Book Chapter: “LEIMAY, CAVE, and the New York Butoh Festival”

“CAVE fluctuates between being our home, our studio, the LEIMAY Ensemble studio, and a space for other artists; the private interweaves with the public, the personal with the social, and sometimes all of those spaces exist simultaneously. For some people, CAVE was a gallery, for others a center of...Continued

10. Mar

Essay: “In These Pandemic-Times We Remind Ourselves And Others Not To Be Afraid To Dwell

“We can not negate the power of our art to procure social change or to serve a cause, or its potential to have a worthy market value; however, our art ought to be embedded in the entanglement and revealed through daily common rituals.” -Ximena Garnica, Dance/NYC (2020)

10. Mar

Review: “Floating Point Waves: Leimay at HERE, NYC”

“Leimay…created an immersive world of captivating videos, simple set pieces that produced bizarre visual effects, and evocative music” “Floating Point Waves worked as an exploration of the intersection of human and electronic images with organic and electronic sounds, and the creativity that can come from inventive interactions with the...Continued

10. Mar

Review: “Choose Your Own Rhythm”

“The most notable exception to the problem of dance divorced from its environment was a kinetic installation by Leimay (a company directed by Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya) in the grand Beaux-Arts Court. Four towering, delicate tents of iridescent white string, suspended from the high ceiling, each housed one...Continued

10. Mar

Review: “Alive in Green-Wood Cemetery

“This dance, “Thresholds” by LEIMAY, suggested life and death happening in a continuum. It was respectful, haunting, and beautiful.” -Sarah Larson, The New Yorker (2014)

10. Mar

Review: “Crossing Over: A Performance Adventure in Green-Wood Cemetery”

“Continuing, we soon encounter a ghostly body hanging from a tree in a net. Further along, we see a line of white clad figures standing above a row of crypts set in the hillside. Looking up, we observe them standing upright, facing us, then falling back, then standing up,...Continued

10. Mar

Review: “Impressions of The BEAT Festival’s ‘Crossing Over'”

“Everyone snaps to attention; Thresholds created by Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya of LEIMAY, reminds us that the pall of death hangs over this place. A few paces later, we congregate in a circular pit as an opera singer intones an eerie, dire melody. Spotlights flash on, five of...Continued

10. Mar

Review: “A Burial Ground Doubling as a Stage”

“And occasionally, around one bend or another, a poignant surprise awaited, foreshadowed by a distant noise or beckoning pool of light. In the first 15 minutes of the almost two-hour tour, after we had stopped at a mass grave of victims from the 1876 Brooklyn Theater fire, a shrill...Continued

10. Mar