Bepop & Butoh

Performance Details

Join us for an unforgettable evening of music and movement with Bebop & Butoh, featuring jazz vocalist Cara Francis and her incredible band: Osama Afifi, Cliff Colon, and David Joyner. Surrounding the stage, experience “jazz of the body” through Butoh dance with Helen Thorsen and dancers, with Tony Gomez adding rich percussion to complete the night.

What is Butoh?

Butoh is an avant-garde dance form from post-WWII Japan, emphasizing embodied movement and authenticity. Dancers shift from conscious choreography to subconscious, inner states, making each movement deeply personal and improvisational. Developed by Tatsumi Hijikata and Ohno Kazuo, Butoh emerged during Japan’s Counter Culture Movement and was influenced by surrealism, neo dada, French mime, ballet, flamenco, German Expressionist dance, and European and Japanese literature.

Butoh explores the human psyche, emotions, and themes of the surreal. It rejects fixed styles and strict rules, often shocking audiences with its avant-garde approach. The art form is an immersive journey into a personal art form that can be deeply moving, and an exploration into the connection  that humanity has with the intricate tapestry of the natural world.

Performances often blend dance, video, and sound, creating a multi-dimensional narrative where movement, visuals, and sound invite a collective awakening of consciousness and the unseen forces within our ecosystem.

Integral to Butoh is its ability to transcend language and cultural barriers, inviting both performers and viewers into a shared space of reflection and transformation. Through slow, deliberate movements and evocative imagery, Butoh allows for profound emotional release and a reimagining of the human experience. This process enables participants to confront existential questions and reconnect with primal aspects of being, making Butoh not just a performance, but a ritual of self-discovery and communal resonance.