LEIMAY is honored to welcome Dai Matsuoka — Butoh dancer with the renowned Sankai Juku Company and director of LAND FES and Butoh Choreo Lab — for a special Butoh Master Class at CAVE.

For over four decades, Sankai Juku has cultivated a unique training method rooted in the interplay of tension and release. Drawing from this legacy, Dai Matsuoka leads participants through body-awareness practices, elemental Butoh choreography, and exercises designed to spark imagination, communication, and embodied expression. His approach opens pathways for artists to move beyond the conventional boundaries of Butoh and discover new creative possibilities.

Join us for this rare chance to study Butoh with a leading practitioner. This class welcomes movement-based artists, dancers, LUDUS students, and friends of the LEIMAY Constellation.

Dai Matsuoka

Dai Matsuoka is a Butoh dancer, choreographer, and director of LAND FES.
 He graduated from Sophia University’s Faculty of Comparative Culture and the Kuwasawa Design School. Since 2005, he has been performing with Sankai Juku and has appeared in many of their major works, including Kinkan Shonen, Tobari, Unetsu, and ARC.

In 2011, Matsuoka founded LAND FES, a non-profit organization dedicated to connecting dance artists, local communities, and social minorities. Since 2017, he has also led the Scramble Dance Project, where people with and without disabilities create dance together. This inclusive project, originally initiated by Butoh legend Yoshito Ohno, has continued under Matsuoka and LAND FES and has been presented at events such as the Korea International Accessible Dance Festival 2023 in Seoul.

He also runs BUTOH CHOREO LAB, an online platform offering video lessons by leading Butoh dancers. Currently, Matsuoka serves as both co-choreographer and one of the lead artists in Houses of Zodiac by Paola Prestini, produced by VisionIntoArt in collaboration with choreographer Georgina Pazcoguin and cellist Jeffrey Zeigler.

Vision Into Art https://www.visionintoart.org 

LEIMAY is supported, in part, by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature. And the Howard Gilman Foundation, the Mertz Gilmore Foundation, The New York Community Trust, the Mellon Foundation and many generous contributions from individual donors.

LEIMAY’s works, community, and coalition programs are supported in part, by public funds from the New York City Department Of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council; National Endowment for the Arts; the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature; the NYC Women’s Fund for Media, Music and Theatre by the City of New York Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment in association with The New York Foundation for the Arts. And by Creative Capital, the National Performance Network (NPN); and the New England Foundation for the Arts’ National Dance Project, with lead funding from the Doris Duke Charitable Foundation and the Mellon Foundation.

In Person Event

Event Dates

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    • October 2, 2025 10:00 am
    • Masterclass 10:00am to 12:00pm $40 fee
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Venue / Location

    • CAVE

    • 58 Grand Street
      Brooklyn, NY

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