Monday, August 23, 2010

Buddha's Butoh Dance



On a foggy, windswept evening in the Civic Center last Thursday, a trio of women were performing an improvised Butoh dance in front of the giant Buddha statue in the plaza.



The only spectators were the occasional passersby.



There was no music or sound involved, including speech...



...and the dancers stayed completely focused no matter what was happening around them.



According to a commenter who stumbled across this post, the dancers were Ellen Godena, Liz Saari Filippone, and Deborah Butler, founder and teacher of a group called Kitsunebutoh.



They were utterly magical.

3 comments:

Matthew Hubbard said...

Beautiful shots, Mike. It was one of those "you had to be there" moments and luckily, you were there with your camera.

KitsuneButoh said...

What a lovely surprise to see some images from that foggy evening. the dancers were: Ellen Godena, http://www.oceanbody.com/about.html; Liz Saari Filippone, http://www.movingyogi.com/aboutus.html; and Deborah Butler, founder of Kitsunebutoh. All three women danced with Kitsunebutoh in Boston in the early 2000's before Kitsunebutoh moved to San Francisco in 2007. They credit their training to many teachers, however, to make a correction in the text of the blog, Kitsunebutoh dancers are not students of Jen Hicks, they were students of Deborah Butler.

Civic Center said...

Dear Kirsune Butoh: And what a lovely surprise to run into all of you dancing that evening. Thanks for writing in, and I'll correct the text.