Butoh Yes They Did

Perhaps more than any other contemporary butoh artist, Shinichi Iova-Koga integrates the humor and horror of existence. Whether coyly romancing a giant bird or doing hand-to-hand combat with psychic demons, he finds balance on the tenuous threshold between laughter and tears, pleasure and pain, nature and artifice. Over the years, Iova-Koga's use of physical discipline and theatrical innovation has led to many collaborations – with Yumiko Yoshioka and Minako Seki in Germany, Do Theatre in Russia, the Degenerate Ensemble in Seattle, and our own Sleepytime Gorilla Museum, to name a few – and nourished an ever-evolving cast for his performance troupe, inkBoat. This production, c(H)ord, features one of inkBoat's most gifted incarnations to date. Presenting performers from Japan, Finland, Germany, Korea, and the U.S., with an original score by the Degenerate Ensemble, c(H)ord charts a journey through time, in which ancestry, biology, and mythology raise their ugly heads to exquisite effect. As is usual with Iova-Koga's pieces, c(H)ord is not restricted to movement – there are monologues, harmonies, and live percussion – and his characters are not purely human. Amoebas and chimeras rise up in a world saturated by color and punctuated by empty space.
April 25-26, 8 p.m., 2008