SALISH SEA BUTOH FESTIVAL is an annual artistic convergence in Port Townsend, Washington to celebrate and deepen the study of Japanese Butoh (舞踏, Butô) and Butoh performance. Since 2021, our retreat-style summer festival has featured immersive Butoh dance workshops taught by veteran Butoh artists from Japan and around the world. Organized annually by Executive Producer Iván-Daniel Espinosa, our 9-day festival also features student workshop performances with live music, outdoor site-specific dances in nature, artist talks, and stage performances open to the public featuring our international teaching artists. The stage performances give festival attendees and local audiences the opportunity to witness artworks by world-renowned Butoh performers as well as emerging artists, offering a potent immersion into this powerful dance form and an intimate glimpse into what Butoh is and can be. In recent years, the festival has also included academic lectures from historians and scholars of Japanese studies that highlight the unique history and philosophy of Butoh from its origins in the avant-garde of Tokyo, Japan to its expansion as a global art form.
Salish Sea Butoh was first launched in 2021 by co-founders Iván-Daniel Espinosa and Cosmo Rapaport, who both envisioned a longer and more immersive retreat-in-nature-style festival that could provide a vibrant alternative to urban Butoh festivals in the big cities. In less than five years, Salish Sea Butoh has become one of the largest active Butoh festivals in North America, and the only annual festival in the United States that continues to consistently offer an extensive international Lineup featuring multiple Japanese master teachers from the senior generation of Butoh as well as world-renowned Butoh performers from countries all over the world.
Our summer festival takes place in a beautifully scenic coastal town on the northern tip of the Olympic Peninsula called Port Townsend, which is located in the SALISH SEA region of Western Washington state. We celebrate the beauty of this ecologically diverse region and its greenspaces, which for thousands of years have been inhabited by the Coast Salish Indigenous peoples of the Pacific Northwest Coast. We acknowledge with deep gratitude and respect that this region is on the ancestral Coast Salish indigenous homelands of the Duwamish, Suquamish, Stillaguamish, and Muckleshoot Tribes and the S'Klallam peoples of the Olympic Peninsula.
All of our events are open to artists of any medium/background who are curious about Butoh and also to people with little or no dance/performance experience. Feel free to contact us at salishseabutohfestival@gmail.com
Iván Daniel Espinosa
— Co-Founder and Executive Producer
IVÁN-DANIEL ESPINOSA is a Latino dance choreographer and academic scholar primarily working in performance, installation and Butoh. Iván-Daniel is currently a PhD Candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He also holds a Master of Arts degree in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (NYU). Iván-Daniel has performed his ecology-themed choreographies nationwide at venues such as the renowned La MaMa Experimental Theatre in New York City, the Seattle International Butoh Festival, the Seattle ARTS IN NATURE Festival, ROMAN SUSAN Art Foundation, Houston Fringe Festival, Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA), and The Dairy Arts Center in Colorado. He has also been invited to present lectures on his artwork at numerous academic forums including the 2019 BUTOH NEXT Symposium at CUNY Graduate Center in NYC, UCLA Center for Performance Studies Conference, Goddard College M.F.A in Interdisciplinary Arts Residency Program, Mid-America Theatre Conference (MATC), American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR), Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE), and the Imagining Differently: Research-Creation Practices in Urgent Times conference at York University in Toronto. Iván-Daniel’s recent multimedia dance installations exploring mycelium fungi networks and mycelium bioacoustics have been cited in academic journals as innovative contributions to the emerging fields of Bio-Art and interspecies performance, and a chapter-length discussion about his artwork with fungi was published in the 2024 Routledge book by Dr. Angenette Spalink titled “Choreographing Dirt: Movement, Performance, and Ecology in the Anthropocene.”
Iván-Daniel's choreographic work and performances are based on his extensive studies of Japanese Butoh. Iván-Daniel began his Butoh training in 2014 and has studied with many renowned Japanese master teachers from the lineage of Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata including Natsu Nakajima, Saga Kobayashi, Koichi Tamano and Hiroko Tamano, Semimaru and Dai Matsuoka of SANKAI JUKU, and Moe Yamamoto of Kanazawa Butoh-Kan. He has also taken numerous workshops with many North American Butoh artists such as Diego Piñón of Butoh Ritual Mexicano, Sheri Brown of DAIPANbutoh, and Bruce Carloye’s Butoh-influenced Body of Movement practice. Iván-Daniel’s most formative Butoh training has been with Seattle Butoh pioneer Joan Laage, who continues to serve as his foremost teacher and collaborator to this day. He is deeply grateful to Joan Laage for providing him with a continuous stream of inspiration. In his work as a choreographer, Iván-Daniel has frequently collaborated with many electroacoustic sound artists and avant-garde musicians, like Japanese percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani and the NAKATANI GONG ORCHESTRA, as well as with art-makers of various mediums, to create his multi-layered, sensorially immersive performance environments.
Robyn Bjornson
— Assistant Producer
Robyn Bjornson is a Seattle-based somatic dance facilitator, movement coach and physical trainer, youth mentor and performing artist. She draws on her long-time studies of Yoga, contact improvisation, acrobatics, partner dance and Butoh as the foundations for her unfolding practice and lifestyle. Robyn was born and raised in the Pacific Northwest, nurtured by her love of connection with Nature, creative movement, and community building. Over the past 15 years, she has followed her passion for deep mind/body/spirit connection, which has led her to dive deeply into Contact Improvisation dance and Butoh.
Robyn began her study of Butoh in Seattle with Maureen Freehill in 2014 and performed for the first time in 2015 in a piece choreographed by Alycia Scott Zollinger. In 2016, she immersed deeply in the practice of Butoh at The Evergreen State College by working extensively with fellow Butoh practitioner Iván Espinosa and performing in many of his choreographies. Robyn has also trained in Butoh with Diego Piñón, Mushimaru Fujieda, Natsu Nakajima, Joan Laage, and Sheri Brown while performing in several staged and public park performances.
Robyn completed her Bachelor of Arts from The Evergreen State College, with an emphasis on psychology, somatic studies and dance education. She has also studied brain-compatible dance education with the founder of the Creative Dance Center in Seattle, Dr. Anne Green Gilbert, and is certified to teach Dr. Gilbert's "Braindance" that is used in schools and centers all over the world. Robyn currently teaches yoga, somatics, functional movement and creative dance workshops in the Seattle area. She aims to bring vibrancy into the lives of others through connection with our bodies and with the earth. Robyn continues her deep appreciation for the elders of Butoh and is humbled to serve as an assistant producer for the Salish Sea Butoh Festival.