Amanda K. Ringger has lived in New York for the past 12 years designing locally, nationally and internationally with artists such as Laura Peterson, Faye Driscoll, Julian Barnett, Alexandra Beller. Kota Yamazaki. Deborah Lose, Cynthia Oliver, Clare Byrne, Antonietta Vicario, Darrah Carr, Karen Love/Umoja, and Mark Jarecke, among others. She received a BA from Goucher College in Baltimore, MD and an MFA in lighting design from Tisch School of the Arts at NYU.

Christopher DeLaurenti is a composer, improvisor, phonographer, and music writer. Concerning his work, he writes, “My music, the offspring of my love affair with sound, incorporates murky atmospheres, unusual field recordings, everyday speech, and an array of instruments deployed in maniacal recombinant polyphony.” (delaurenti.net)

Photographer for cokaseki: Tooboe (Howl) (U.S. Premiere) @ NYBF 2005

Musician for for Masaki lwana

Music for Masaki lwana: Beast of Grass (U.S. Premiere) @ NYBF 2005

Music for Masaki lwana: Beast of Grass (U.S. Premiere) @ NYBF 2005

Music for Masaki lwana: Beast of Grass (U.S. Premiere) @ NYBF 2005

Koichi & Hiroko Tamano are the directors of Harupin-Ha ButohDance Theatre, which they started in 1972. Former students of butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata, the Tamanos’ devotion to the mastery of dance is expressed through works that are at once beautiful, graceful, shocking and grotesque.

Koichi & Hiroko Tamano are the directors of Harupin-Ha Butoh Dance Theatre, which they started in 1972. Former students of butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata, the Tamanos’ devotion to the mastery of dance is expressed through works that are at once beautiful, graceful, shocking and grotesque.

Minako Seki was born in Nagasaki, from 1985 a dancer for Butoh-Dance-Company DANCE-LOVE-MACHINE, directed by Tetsuro tamura, preformed in Europe with this production in 1986. In 1987 she was co-founder of tatoeba – THEATER DANSE GROTESQUE, the first German-Japanese Butoh Ensemble (Berlin) She has taught workshops in Berlin, Santiago de Chile, Bolivia, Japan, San Fransisco and New York.

Abby Walton (Costume Design) is currently assisting Oana Botez-Ban on upcoming productions of Richard I (Classic Stage Company) and Miss Julie (Colgate University), and recently worked with the Moscow Festival Ballet on their touring production of Sleeping Beauty. This piece for the Japan Society is her first solo design effort since arriving to New York City. She graduated from Smith College this spring, and has also studied at the Glasgow School of Art in the U.K. Many thanks to Oana Botez-Ban, the members of Smith College’s Costume Department.

Yanira Castro (New York/Puerto Rico) is the director of Yanira Castro + Company. Although not a butoh dancer per se, her expressionistic and emotionally charged pieces share aspects of its aesthetic. The Village Voice described her off-kilter performers as “radiant mythic beasts, glamorous and terrifying…

JEFF JANISHESKI has trained in butoh since 1989 – including three years with Kazuo Ohno- and Japanese No theatre since 1992; he is also the co-founder of the New York Butoh Festival.

Ralph Lee is a mask maker, theater director and Founding Artistic Director the Mettawee Theater Company. He has been artist in residence in many universities and performing spaces and is a recipient of a Guggenheim Award for Excellence.

Daniel Carter is a musician and improviser playing yearly at the Vision Festival, and internationally with many groups. He has played for many dancers including Margaret Beals, Simone Forti and Laurie Hockman. He has made several CD’s with the group Other Dimensions.

LEIGH EVANS is an international yoga teacher and dancer. Her dance/theatre-work is fed by fascination with performance and meditative traditions of Asia. LEIGH EVANS is an international yoga teacher and dancer. Her dance/theatre-work is fed by fascination with performance and meditative traditions of Asia.

Christian Pincock is a trombonist and composer in the New York area who works in many different musical settings. He has performed internationally at the Louis Armstrong International Jazz Competition in Le Havre, France, the Chiliwack Jazz Festival in British Columbia, and in the U.S. at Birdland, Niagara, Jordan Hall in Boston, and the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C.

Marc Ates is a Berlin based director, choreographer performer and lighting designer. From 1993 to 2000, he was a student/dancer of Anzu Furukawa whom he considers his primary professor and teacher. Since 1990, his various art and performance projects (as dancer, performer and director) have spanned Germany, the U.S., Italy, Poland, GUS, France, Spain and Denmark. In the U.S. he has collaborated with the San Francisco based company inkboat. In 1995 Ates founded loplop performance space in Berlin. The same year he formed the dance company cokaseki along with dancer Yuko Kaseki

Sadayuki Hayashi formed his own dance company, Golgi Worx, with Ono Kzuyoshi in 1989. With the aim of fabricating “artistic anti-art,” he began creating and presenting his dance works. He has been active in the Tokyo dance scene, creating short pieces and performing as a dancer in the works of such choreographers as Kota Yamazaki and Tamami Yamada. In 2003, he was a finalist for the Toyota Choreography Awards 2003. He is currently the Anti-Artistic Director of Golgi Worx.

Yukio Suzuki began his butoh training in 1997 and has performed with such groups and artists as Asbestos Studio (the butoh center founded by Akiko Motofuji), Goro Namerikawa (a former member of sankaijuku) and SAL-VANILLA, a multimedia performance group. In 2003 he joined Ko’s company with his performance in [Edge03] in Mexico. His choreography for his own company, Kingyo, was the recipient of the Audience Award in the Toyota Choreography Awards 2005.

DAIJI MEGURO joined Ko Murobushi’s three-man Edge Company in 2004. He since emerging as one of the most thoughtful voices in international Butoh. Meguro is the founder of the NUDE Dance Company. Daiji Meguro trained under the late Akiko Motufuji, the wife of Tatsumi Hijikata. He has appeared in several productions of Ko & Edge Co. since the 2003 [Edge03] performance in Mexico. In 2004, he launched his own performance company, NUDE. By redefining the physical body based on the ideas of butoh, Daiji aims to develop butoh for the next generation.

Rickard Sporrong is a freelance computer and video artist based in Uppsala. He has collaborated with SU-EN in many live events and film projects. Website: homepage.mac.com/rrongproduction/rronghome

Lee Berwick worked in the South London underground Dub and Industrial music scene, and has run the recording studio and record company Digi Dub since 1989. His work is a re-smelting, re- working and re-cycling of surrounding sound. Current projects include a site-specific audio art project, inspired by the river Thames, and the video film ‘Yatra’ Berwick and SU-EN have worked in close collaboration since 1994. www.digidub.demon.co.uk

Initially trained in modern dance.She then studied intensively with Yukio Waguri, and under his guidance formed the Tokyo-based group Shinonome with Yuko Kawamoto and Asuka Shimada in the mid 1990s. The word shinonome comes from the Japanese term for the twilight sky, when the darkness fades away in daylight. Shinonome’s fresh approach differs from what has been translated in the West as butoh’s “dance of darkness” – instead they show a more twilight world that balances the dark and the light. Chisato Katata’s website: http://www.shinonomebutoh.com

Jonathan Vincent has performed as a pianist, accordionist, and vocalist throughout the east coast, Germany, Switzerland and France. He has premiered several compositions by Stuart Saunders Smith and Jef Arnal. Preview recordings at generaterecords.net and adamjameswilson.com. Contact: jonathanvincent@hotmail.com

Robin Dorn is a professional Seattle artist and illustrator, specializing in human anatomy. She has collaborated with Dappin’ Butoh on several projects, designing costumes, scenery, and graphics.

Christopher DeLaurenti is a composer, improvisor, phonographer, and music writer. Concerning his work, he writes, “My music, the offspring of my love affair with sound, incorporates murky atmospheres, unusual field recordings, everyday speech, and an array of instruments deployed in maniacal recombinant polyphony.” (delaurenti.net)

Composition and sound design. Petre received an undergraduate degree in Jazz improvisation at Mannes. He has premiered works at the Kitchen and the Virginia Ballet with Amy Cox and Tai Jimenez and plays saxophone and clarinet with Burnt Sugar. Petre studied within the Sonologie Institute at the Royal Conservatory in DenHaag in the Netherlands.