Butoh America unearths the people and networks that popularized Butoh
dance in the Americas through a focused look at key artists, producers,
and festivals in the United States and Mexico.
This is the first book to gather these histories into one narrative and
look at the development of American Butoh. From its inception in San
Francisco in 1976, American Butoh aligned with avant-garde performance
art in alternative venues such as galleries and experimental theaters.
La MaMa in New York and the Festival Internacional Cervantino in
Guanajuato both served to legitimize the form as esteemed experimental
performance. A crystallizing moment in each of the three locations-San
Francisco, New York, and Mexico City-has been a grand-scale festival
featuring prominent Japanese and numerous other international artists,
as well as fostering local communities.
This book stitches together the flow of people and ideas, highlights the
connections in the Butoh diaspora, and incorporates interviewee
perspectives regarding future directions for the genre in the Americas.