2026 Salish Sea Butoh Festival

Workshop Teachers and MainStage Performers

  • YUMIKO YOSHIOKA

    — Berlin, Germany / JAPAN

  • AKIRA KASAI

    — Tokyo, JAPAN

  • MOE YAMAMOTO

    — Kanazawa, JAPAN

  • KEI SHIRASAKA

    — Kanazawa, JAPAN

  • KOTA YAMAZAKI

    — NYC / JAPAN

  • MINA NISHIMURA

    — NYC / JAPAN

  • MAUME (formerly Katrina Wolfe)

    — Port Townsend, Washington

  • EMIKO AGATSUMA

    — Tokyo, JAPAN

  • HARUKO CROW NISHIMURA

    — SEATTLE, Washington

  • JOAN LAAAGE / KOGUT -- (special guest performer)

    — SEATTLE, Washington

  • MITSUTAKE KASAI -- (special guest performer)

    — Tokyo, JAPAN

  • EVAN RAY SUZUKI -- (special guest performer)

    — BROOKLYN, New York City

AKIRA KASAI        

— from Tokyo, JAPAN

Born in 1943 in Mie Prefecture, Japan, Akira Kasai is a world-renowned Butoh dancer, choreographer and teacher belonging to the 1st-generation of Butoh dancers. Kasai began his dance career by originally training in ballet and modern dance but then became instantly fascinated by Butoh in 1963 when he met and began to work with both Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata in the early development of Butoh. In 1965, Kasai was one of the main dancers in the historic ROSE-COLORED DANCE performance choreographed by Hijikata in Tokyo that featured interdisciplinary collaborations with renowned avant-garde artists, provocative homoerotic themes, and a famous duet with Kazuo Ohno that showcased Butoh's unique expression of the body through intense physicality that challenged gender norms and societal conventions. Throughout the 1960’s, Kasai continued to study with Kazuo Ohno and by 1971, at the age of 28, Kasai started his own dance studio Tenshi-kan. From this studio, Kasai trained many Butoh artists that would go on to have successful careers like Setsuko Yamada, Kota Yamazaki and others.

He moved to Germany in 1979 and trained there for six years in Eurhythmy. In 1994, Kasai made an explosive return to Japan’s dance world with a work titled Seraphita at the Nakano Zero Hall. This was Kasai’s first Butoh performance in 15 years and was well-received as a mysterious work of dance surrealism in which Kasai exuded a hermaphroditic aspect with great appeal for the fans who had long been awaiting his return to the dance world. Kasai has been active in the Japanese and European Butoh scenes ever since, continuing to present not only his own solo pieces as well as choreographing pieces for influential Butoh artists of Japan’s contemporary dance world such as Kuniko Kisanuki, Kim Ito, Naoko Shirakawa and Ikuyo Kuroda, and he has also choreographed for figures like the famed ballet dancer Farouk Ruzimatov. At the same time he has also performed actively overseas in North and South America, Europe and South Korea. Kasai continues to be a pivotal figure in the Butoh world and is renowned for having cultivated his own highly idiosyncratic style of dance, pushing the envelope of Butoh by mixing in elements as diverse as German Eurhythmy, Japanese Kabuki theatre, and even hip-hop. According to the Walker Art Center, he is “heralded as the ‘Nijinsky of Butoh’ Japan’s Akira Kasai gives a tour-de-force solo performance. This acclaimed master of butoh floats the audience on a surreal and startling journey through time, cultures, and states of being. Kasai’s striking personae morph through kabuki drama, street dancer, and solitary actor while his movement shifts between the soulful otherworlds of butoh.” At eighty-three years old, he is still teaching, choreographing, and performing today.

Yumiko Yoshioka

— from Berlin, Germany/Japan

Originally from Tokyo, YUMIKO YOSHIOKA is a Japanese Butoh dancer, teacher, choreographer and performer that belongs to the third generation of senior Butoh artists. Yumiko was a core dancer of the ARIADONE Company, the first female Butoh company, founded by Carlotta Ikeda and Ko Murobushi in 1974. In 1978, Yumiko performed with Carlotta and Ko Murobushi in Paris "Le Dernier Eden- Porte de L'Au-Dela," the very first Butoh performance to be presented in a public theatre in Europe. Since 1988, Yumiko has been based in Berlin, Germany where she has become one of the most important figures of the European Butoh community and international contemporary Butoh scene.

In 1988, Yumiko founded THEATRE DANCE GROTESQUE with fellow Butoh artist Minako Seki and delta RA'i in Berlin (1988-1996). Between 1995-2015 she was a core member of TEN PEN CHii art labor, an interdisciplinary and experimental art formation, as a dancer and a choreographer along with JoaXhim Manger (visual artist) and Zam Johnson (composer and musician). Yumiko is also the key founder of the storied eX..it! Dance eXchange Festival at Schloss Bröllin. Many decade-long collaborations with interdisciplinary artists encouraged Yumiko to unfold her own personal style of dancing called “Body Resonance.”

Yumiko continues to be a key figure of the global Butoh scene and she has served as the Artistic Director of the B.I.G. (Butoh International Gathering) convergence, teaching and activating local and international Butoh communities. A chapter highlighting Yumiko’s career is featured in Bruce Baird’s newest book A HISTORY OF BUTŌ in which he writes that “Yumiko is an important proponent of mixed media butô through her dance company TEN PEN CHIi, and one of the dancers who has most embodied what it means to practice butô as an itinerant woman. Yoshioka keeps up a gruelling schedule of international travel teaching butô workshops around the world and also organized the eX..it! butô festival, bringing butô and dancers of other styles of dance in contact with each other…Whether by artists traveling to her, or as is much more often the case, Yoshioka traveling to artists, she has provided numberless dancers and artists with chances to ‘ex- change, ex- perience, ex- plore, and ex- it’ out of themselves and be changed in the process.”

YAMAMOTO MOE

— from Kanazawa, JAPAN

Moe Yamamoto is a renowned Japanese Butoh dancer, teacher and choreographer that trained and danced directly with Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata at his legendary Asbestos-kan studio in Tokyo. Yamamoto began his prolific career in Butoh when he entered Hijikata’s dance studio in 1974 and studied with him during the development of Hijikata’s Butoh-Fu dance notation and choreographic method. Yamamoto trained intensively with Hijikata and with Yoko Ashikawa for three years, and he performed in the series of performances Hijikata choreographed for the dance group Hakutōbō throughout the mid-1970’s. In 1976, Yamamoto was the lead performer in a historic Butoh work titled Costume in Front (Shōmen no ishō) which was choreographed by Hijikata for Moe Yamamoto as principal dancer. It was one of the later serial performances (renzoku kōen), which Hijikata had been creating since 1974. A bilingual publication of Yamamoto’s rehearsal notes for this choreography was published by Ugly Duckling Press in 2015.

In 1976, with the blessing of Hijikata, Yamamoto launched his own Butoh company, Kanazawa Butoh-Kan based in the coastal city of Kanazawa, Japan. Yamamoto actively choreographs stage performances and ensemble works for Kanazawa Butoh-Kan along with Kei Shirasaka. Since 1999, they have promoted Butoh internationally, including numerous works in Europe. Yamamoto and Kanazawa Butoh-Kan actively collaborate with the Hijikata Archive at Keio University Art Center and Yamamoto most recently taught at the 2025 BUTOH SCORES MEXICO Symposium in Mexico City. Yamamoto’s performances and workshops offer a rare opportunity to discover the detailed inner workings of Hijikata’s choreographic method and rediscover choreographic phrases from Hijikata’s seminal works of the 1970s with a dancer who originally performed them.

KEI SHIRASAKA

— from Kanazawa, JAPAN

KEI SHIRASAKA, born and raised in Japan, is a Butoh dancer and performer and core member of Kanazawa Butoh-Kan. Kei is also the long-time artistic partner and life partner of Moe Yamamoto who choreographs works for Kanazawa Butoh-Kan and performs alongside with Kei. In the 1970’s, while continuing her own artistic training, she met and studied Butoh with Yamamoto, a former dancer of Tatsumi Hijikata’s Asbestos-Kan Butoh company.  Through this training, she learned the techniques and essence of Hijikata’s Butoh.

Since 1999, Kei has promoted Butoh internationally, including creating and performing both solo performances and ensemble performances throughout Europe. Kei performed in the work Okurebina in 1986, and subsequently directed the all-female Butoh troupe 7xBikki. Most recently, Kei co-taught Butoh workshops and performed on stage with Moe Yamamoto at the Yale University BUTOH SCORES Symposium in 2024 and also at BUTOH SCORES MEXICO: Deconstructing Hijikata Symposium held in November 2025 in Mexico City.

EMIKO AGATSUMA

— from Tokyo, Japan

EMIKO AGATSUMA, born and raised in Japan, is a Butoh dancer and Art Director at AGAXART, a platform dedicated to cultivating and nurturing Butoh talent in Japan. Agatsuma began her dance journey after graduating from Tokyo's Waseda University in 1999, when she joined Dairakudakan, one of Japan's largest Butoh companies founded by the renowned Akaji Maro, known for their theatrically explosive large-scale performances. She trained and danced under Akaji Maro for over two decades, and she played a central role in every Dairakudakan production from 1999-2020. She was the principal dancer in Dairakudakan’s critically acclaimed Mushi no Hoshi (Space Insect) and Pseudo human/Super human performances at the Vancouver International Dance Festival (VDIF) in Vancouver, Canada. Agatsuma showcased her versatility as a performer and director in Tokyo's Kochuten Theatre and was invited to perform at the Japan Culture Center in Paris in 2015. She received the Best Young Artist Award from the Japan Dance Critics Association in 2015 and was selected to represent Japan at the 39th annual Battery Dance Festival in New York City in 2020. Since 2022, she has organized the HOKUSAI MANGA BUTOH project both in-person and online, and she was invited to perform the Butoh work "So Zo Ro" to represent Japan at the Wan Theatre in Taipei in 2024.

Agatsuma’s international acclaim stems from her innovative approach to Butoh, blending her unique method and aesthetics to create striking performances. Emiko's commitment extends to teaching Butoh as well. In 2018, she served as a Butoh instructor at Shinehouse Theatre in Taipei, Taiwan, and conducted Butoh workshops at institutions such as Waseda University, Taipei National University of the Arts, Tainan National University of the Arts, and Lasalle College of the Arts in Singapore.


KOTA YAMAZAKI

— from NYC / Tokyo, Japan

Born and raised in Niigata, Japan, Kota Yamazaki was first introduced to Butoh under the teaching of Akira Kasai at Tenshi-kan at the young age of 18.  Yamazaki graduated from Bunka Fashion College in Tokyo with a Bachelor of Arts in Fashion Design.  After his Butoh teacher Akira Kasai moved to Germany, Yamazaki continued his Butoh practice with Kunishi Kamiryo at Salamu-kan. With an intention of expanding the field and possibilities of Butoh, Yamazaki started creating contemporary dance works in his 30’s with Tokyo-based dance company, rosy co. , which he led from 1995-2001.  Since 2003, Yamazaki has been based in both New York and Tokyo, presenting dance works nationally and internationally.


Kota Yamazaki has received numerous awards for his choreography and performances including a 2018 Guggenheim Fellowship, a New York Dance and Performance Award (also known as the Bessie Award), and a 2016 New York Foundation for the Arts award for his work as founder and director of the FLUID HUG-HUG dance company, which integrates Butoh-based somatic practices, Japanese aesthetics, and Buddhist teachings such as “one equals many, many equals, one.” From 2016-19, Yamazaki received artistic commissions from the Japan Contemporary Dance Network, New York Live Arts, and the Baryshnikov Arts Center in NY, to create a dance trilogy called the “Darkness Odyssey” that examined Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata’s dance of darkness and its relation to Gilles Deluze’s philosophies. During those years, Yamazaki continued to teach around the world, and he is a current Teaching Faculty member at Bennington College in Vermont.  Yamazaki has also served as the Director of the Whenever Wherever Festival, a Tokyo-based cross-disciplinary experimental dance festival since 2009.

MINA Nishimura

— from NYC / Japan

Originally from Tokyo, Japan, Mina Nishimura was introduced to Butoh dance through Kota Yamazaki’s teaching while studying Tatsumi Hijikata’s Butoh scores and Zen Buddhist philosophies independently.  She also studied and was greatly influenced by Butoh artists Ko Murobushi and Masaki Iwata. Butoh-based concepts and principles are reflected across her somatic, performance and choreographic practices, as well as Buddhism-influenced philosophies. Mina’s current artwork and research is focused on ever-changing relationships between internal landscapes and external forms.

After graduating from Ochanomizu University in Tokyo with a Bachelor of Arts in Performing Arts Education, Nishimura continued to study at Merce Cunnigham Studio in New York. After completion of the professional training program, she has performed and collaborated with groundbreaking NY-based choreographers and tdirectors such as John Jasperse, Dean Moss, Rashaun Mitchell + Silas Riener, Vicky Shick, Kota Yamazaki, Nami Yamamoto, Ursula Eagly, RoseAnne Spradlin, David Gordon, DD Dorvillier, Neil Greenburg, Daria Fain, Trajal Harrel, Yoshiko Chuma, Mårten Spångberg, Cori Olinghouse, Moriah Evans, John Jesurun, Ellen Fisher and Stephen Earnharst, while deepening her Butoh practice mainly with Kota Yamazaki. Mina has taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Bennington College, University of California-Davis, Ferris University in Japan, Movement Research in New York City, Brooklyn Studios for Dance among other dance organizations, dance festivals and schools.  She joined the Faculty at Bennington College in 2021 after completing her Master of Fine Arts Fellowship at the college.  She was on the cover as a featured artist in the May 2021 issue of Dance Magazine, and is a recipient of a 2019 Foundation for the Contemporary Arts Grants to Artists Award (FCA Award.

MAUMAE (formerly Katrina Wolfe)

— based in Port Townsend, WA

Maumae (formerly Katrina Wolfe) is an interdisciplinary artist working with sculpture, physical movement, organic materials, costume, film, and photography. Having begun her creative work with visual arts, she now creates costumes, installations, and wearable sculptures from organic and recycled materials, which she incorporates into her live performances. These performances also include live soundscapes created by various musicians and sound artists. She has collaborated with a wide range of avant-garde musicians in the Puget Sound area including numerous performances with Tatsuya Nakatani, Joey Largent, and with her mother Kawtee Wolf. Maumae is the founder of Studio Ma, a performance space in Seattle's University District that is still operating as a community art space to this day.

Maumae studied Butoh with Joan Laage in Seattle and with Japanese Butoh artist Atsushi Takenouchi in Italy. She has also taken workshops with various Butoh teachers, including a highly influential multi-day workshop with first-generation butoh artist Daisuke Yoshimoto. Archival footage of Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata’s work has also greatly inspired Maumae in the development of her personal style of movement. Another important aspect of Maumae's artwork is dancing outdoors and dancing with the elements of nature in remote and site-specific locations. She also takes photographs, writes, creates films from her performance work, and occasionally works on a large, slowly evolving collection of mixed media, abstract paintings and drawings.

MITSUTAKE KASAI

— Guest Performer from Tokyo, Japan

Born and raised in Japan, Mitsutake Kasai is the son of legendary Butoh master Akira Kasai. Mitsutake has performed and danced with his father dozens of times throughout Japan, Europe and the United States. Mitsutake was raised by a family of dancers and he performed his first solo dance in 1998. In his own dance work, Mitsutake combines Butoh, hip-hop and breakdancing. In 2008, he studied modern dance and tap dance in New York City for one year under a grant from the Cultural Affairs Agency to dispatch promising artists abroad to study. Throughout the years, Mitsutake has collaborated with many renowned Butoh artists of the contemporary generation such as Yukio Suzuki, Kota Yamazaki, Mina Nishimura, Taketeru Kudo, Kentaro Kujirai and many others.

In 2019, Mitsutake was commissioned to reprise his father’s highly acclaimed "Pollen Revolution", a solo performance directed and choreographed by Butoh master Akira Kasai. Mitsutake performed his father’s legendary piece to great reviews and toured the work with his father overseas performing in venues such as the Asia-Pacific Triennial of Performing Arts and at The University of Melbourne in Australia, The Japan Society's Contemporary Dance Festival in New York, and the HOTPOT East Asia Dance Platform at the City Contemporary Dance Festival (CCDF) in Hong Kong.

EVAN RAY SUZUKI

— Opening Weekend Guest Performer from Brooklyn, NYC

evan ray suzuki is a dance and performance artist of Japanese descent originally from Whidbey Island, Washington, and currently based in Brooklyn, New York. He creates multidisciplinary projects across butoh, dance, theater, and film/video and has studied Butoh with diverse artists including Mina Nishimura and in workshops with Yumiko Yoshioka.

As a choreographer, evan creates new projects in a Butoh-ish choreographic style. evan’s artwork has been presented internationally at the Umbria Factory Festival in Spoleto, Italy, and at venues such as Ars Nova, JACK, Abrons Arts Center, Center for Performance Research, PAGEANT, Trans-Pecos, Icebox Project Space, WestFest, DCTV, and many parks, galleries, and basements. Recent projects have been supported by grants and residencies from the New York State Council on the Arts, Foundation for Contemporary Arts, La MaMa, Ars Nova, New Dance Alliance, Amanda+James, and Centro Umbro di Residenze Artistiche. evan works as a performer with David Neumann, Mina Nishimura, Glenn Potter-Takata. Current research interests include the sociocultural influence of new media (memes), the choreographic embodiment of natural landscape, and the performance of detachment.

In evan ray suzuki’s own words: “Butoh is the conduit for how I think about and create body-based work. My experience with butoh is both in collaboration with other practitioners—like Glenn Potter-Takata, Kota Yamazaki, and Mina Nishimura—and I’ve also made butoh the core essence of my own artistic output, at least for the past seven or eight years… I’m invested in a rigorous engagement with butoh and its conceptual stakes, but I’m also emphasizing a sense of irreverence relative to some of the movement scores and aesthetics. There’s always an interplay between being serious about the practice and allowing other influences to come into its activation, like the “Western” forms of dance training that my collaborators and I possess. In some ways, this is relevant to my position as a mixed-race Japanese American performing butoh. Butoh is a cultural touchpoint for me, but my performance will always be layered with other ideas and influences.”

Joan Laage / Kogut Butoh

— Opening Weekend Guest Performer from Seattle, WA

JOAN LAAGE is a performer, choreographer and dance educator who is regarded as the Godmother of Pacific Northwest Butoh. While living in Japan, Joan studied and trained with Butoh pioneer Yoko Ashikawa (the major disciple of Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata) and with Butoh master Kazuo Ohno in Tokyo.  Joan is one of the few non-Japanese dancers to dance under Yoko Ashikawa and to perform in her legendary Butoh troupe, Gnome, in the 1980’s.  Joan holds a PhD in Dance from Texas Woman’s University Department of Dance. Her pioneering Doctoral Dissertation titled “Embodying the Spirit: the Significance of the Body in the Contemporary Japanese Dance Movement of Butoh” has been cited and presented at dozens of academic conferences and symposiums around the world. Joan continues to performs internationally and tours Europe every year. She has been a featured artist at national and international Butoh festivals since the 1990’s including the New York Butoh Festival, the UCLA Butoh Symposium, Vienna’s Hybrid Butoh Festival in Austria, Tenri Butoh Festival and En Chair et En Son Acousmatic Festival in Paris France, the 2024 Amsterdam Butoh Festival and the 2024 Warsaw Butoh Festival in Poland.  Joan has also performs annually at the Seattle Butoh Festival and was a headliner artist at the inaugural Salish Sea Butoh Festival.

In addition to over 35 years of teaching and thousands of performances over the years, Joan is known as the Northwest Butoh pioneer and is responsible for bringing the art form of Butoh to Seattle in 1990.  She continues to perform annually at the Seattle Japanese Garden and Kubota Garden Foundation.  Joan's artwork and contributions to the field of Butoh are highlighted in several award-winning books and publications DANCING INTO DARKNESS: BUTOH, ZEN AND JAPAN and Butoh: Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy by Sondra Fraleigh as well as BUTH AMERICA: Butoh Dance in the United States and Mexico from 1970 to the early 2000s by scholar Tanya Calamoneri.