Butoh Chicago: Tadashi Endo

• • 3ARTS MATCH
  • 103% contributed

This June, I am organizing a week–long visit in Chicago by one of the world’s great Butoh masters, Tadashi Endo. Performing for the first time in the U.S., Tadashi Endo will present IKIRU-Réquiem para Pina Bausch at the Old Town School of Folk Music on June 24, followed by a week of workshops for beginning and advanced students at the Outerspace Studios in Wicker Park. As an active performer and Butoh dancer myself for over ten years, I am passionate about this art form and its continued development within contemporary dance. By founding Butoh Chicago, a marketing platform and event series in the city, I have fostered a growing community of artists interested in this mysterious and mesmerizing dance. With this 3AP campaign, I now have the opportunity to bring this influential performer and teacher to Chicago to share his unique artistry and training with the local community. While I have secured the venue and some support from Old Town School of Folk Music, there are many other costs associated with this project, including travel, accommodations, artist fees, and other expenses. Through other recent successes, I know that Chicago is hungry for more Butoh and that our dance community thrives with engagements such as these. Only with your support will I be able to fully realize this project and continue to bring high-quality Butoh programming to Chicago. Thank you for your support!

About This Project

One of the major developments in contemporary dance in the latter half of the 20th century, Butoh combines dance, theater, performance art, and influences of traditional Japanese performance to create a unique form that is both controversial and universal in its expression. I am particularly interested in this form that diverges from traditional dance techniques and the many hybrid iterations being taught and experienced around the world. In my own work, I have developed a style of performing and teaching drawn from Butoh, including creating a weekly Butoh Body class, and facilitating numerous workshops and performance opportunities for master-level Butoh artists. In 2014, I organized a free public event called Spawned Seeds: Post-Butoh Festival, supported in part by the Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events. The success of that event led to its sequel, SSII: Post-Butoh Festival, which was performed and met with great acclaim this April 2015.

Tadashi Endo, former student of the great butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno, is currently director of the Butoh-Center MAMU and the Butoh-Festivals MAMU, based in Göttingen, Vienna. His repertoire includes No theatre, Kabuki, and Butoh, as well as the traditional forms of Occidental theatre. In his extraordinary dances, Endo expresses the field of tension between Ying and Yang, the male and female, and their ever-lasting alteration. In describing his own work, Endo “uses the suggestive power of concentrated movement phrases to explore the closure of life's cycles. He opens up a space that can be either calming or irritating, and in the experience of which, the observer submerges him-/herself into a world beyond time and words, referred to as MA.”

This opportunity to host Tadashi Endo here, to provide the experience of working and learning from him are united in a desire to change the world—dramatically, poetically, energetically. The classes he offers seek to empower participants to expand their creative process through body awareness. It is no small effort in actualizing this work and this project—it requires intense focus, diligence, and fierce collaborations with artists here in Chicago and from around the world. I am learning every step of the way as I create these opportunities, utilizing my business, communication, and art making skills in tandem. With your support, this visit will be transformative for audiences and artists, and Butoh Chicago will get the spark it needs to thrive well into the future!

Thank yous

Contribute any amount or choose from the levels below.

• $20
  Commemorative t-shirt from the SSII: Post-Butoh Festival 2015, sincere thanks and your name listed online as a Supporter of Butoh Chicago. ($0.00 is tax deductible.)
• $50
  2 Commemorative t-shirts (one for a friend!) from the SSII: Post-Butoh Festival 2015 and your name listed online as a Supporter of Butoh Chicago. ($0.00 is tax deductible.)
• $75
  Set of three hand-printed cards designed by Sara Zalek, a commemorative t-shirt from the SSII: Post-Butoh Festival 2015, and your name listed online as a Supporter of Butoh Chicago. ($0.00 is tax deductible.)
• $150
  One free ticket to the IKIRU performance on June 24, a commemorative t-shirt from the SSII: Post-Butoh Festival 2015, and your name listed online as a Supporter of Butoh Chicago. ($0.00 is tax deductible.)
• $300
  Two free tickets to the IKIRU performance on June 24, an archival print from our Artist Collection, and your name listed as a SUPER Supporter in online and printed promotions. ($0.00 is tax deductible.)
• $500
  Two free tickets to the IKIRU performance on June 24, an archival print from our Artist Collection, a DVD compilation from SSII: Post-Butoh Festival, and your name listed as a SUPER Supporter in online and printed promotions. ($0.00 is tax deductible.)

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Sara Zalek

Make a Wave Artist

Sara Zalek is a visual artist, choreographer, and curator rooted in Butoh, the avant-garde, and investigations of personal identity. She is obsessed with time travel, experimental science, hybrid animals, permaculture, and the intentional act of transformation. Through Butoh Chicago, Zalek …

View Sara Zalek's profile

• 5 updates
• 52 supporters

• Update 1: Thank you

  Posted on May 06, 2015

   

  Off to a super exciting and suprising start! One I reach 33% of my goal, 3Arts will kick in the next third of my total! I so appreciate you for showing up here, it means the world to me. 

  Update 2: Watch the trailer! IKIRU-

  Posted on May 11, 2015

   

  Update 3: Just Matched

  Posted on May 15, 2015

   

  I just received my 1/3 Match, so thank you all for showing support to this project and the future of Butoh events and workshops in Chicago. Just 33% left to go. Any amount gets you listed as a supporter of Butoh Chicago on the website, and in all materials going forward, PLUS I still have T Shirts available, 100% cotton and made in here in Chicago by RepChi.

  Give a little or a lot, either way, I appreciate knowing you are with me in the spirit of making it happen!

  Update 4: Getting Closer

  Posted on June 05, 2015

   

  Shout out to my supporters this week, for calling, emailing and sending your well wishes too! Your generosity is proving it, I am getting closer and closer to the finish line, just 13% to go <3

  Talking to you Tim Aguero, Meg Biddle, Cynthia Bond, Sharon Fierro, Laura Goldstein, Sangeet Gupta, Carla Hayden, Gina Hutchings, Dan Matts, Jonathan Meyer, Liane Owen, Adam Rose, Mary Tabar

   

  Supporters are all officially listed on the Butoh Chicago webiste 
  

  Update 5: Beyond the Goal!

  Posted on June 09, 2015

   

  Thank you friends and family and donors anonymous! Just moments ago I went over my goal, and I am so excited to share with you this news and my sweet relief.

  Now for the icing on the cake. Any extra funds go toward continued subsidizing of class costs, new opportunities for teachers and students to come together, and more public performances. Go ahead and give beyond the goal if you feel inspired.

  And Dance if you want to!

• Thank you to the following for contributing to 3Arts with the recommendation that we support this project.

  • Rick Thompson

  • Karen Faith

  • Kathy Weinkle

  • Elizabeth Bullock

  • Ellen Sullivan

  • Jennifer Guptill

  • Bryan Saner

  • Jordan Karol

  • Christine Slivon

  • Eugene Park

  • Kathleen Larson

  • Jon Satrom

  • Geoff Guy

  • Lily Emerson

  • Sarah Gottlieb

  • Carole McCurdy

  • Anonymous Supporter

  • Anonymous Supporter

  • Catherine Yanes

  • Cathy Swigon

  • Randall West

  • Aurora Tabar

  • Mark Beasley

  • Mark Beasley

  • Carol Zalek

  • Jon Satrom

  • Anonymous Supporter

  • Margaret Biddle

  • Dan Matts

  • Adam Rose

  • carla hayden

  • Anonymous Supporter

  • Nora Sharp

  • Mary Tabar

  • Timothy Aguero

  • sangeet gupta

  • Laura Goldstein

  • Jonathan Meyer

  • Gina Hutchings

  • Sharon Fierro

  • liane owen

  • Cynthia Bond

  • nance klehm

  • Allyson Esposito

  • Lee Klawans

  • Nick Hahn

  • Anonymous Supporter

  • Annie Rudnik

  • Anonymous Supporter

  • Rachel Ellison

  • cristal sabbagh

  • Tim Corpus

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