This year's festival promises some innovations:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Butoh Festival aims to go beyond white body paint<P>Titania Leung Inglis, Ang Newspapers<P>IN the late 1950s, as modern dance was taking flight in the West, a new dance form rose from the ashes of post-World War II Japan. Ankoku butoh, the "dance of darkness," was everything that Western modern dance was not: unsentimental, gloomy, based in the heavy movements of laborers and of traditional Japanese theater. In recent decades, butoh has remained relatively obscure in Japan, but it has attracted an international following. Butoh troupes have sprung up in Paris, New York -- and the Bay Area. This week marks the beginning of the seventh annual San Francisco Butoh Festival, the largest butoh festival in the United States. The festival offers performances, workshops and symposia at various San Francisco locations through Aug. 18.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><a href=http://buzz.insidebayarea.com/default_nmobuzz.asp?puid=4403&indx=0&article=on target=_blank>More</a><P><BR>Follow this link to the <a href=../../../ubb/Forum13/HTML/000297.html target=_blank>press release</a>.

From <B>New butoh challenges and surprises Athleticism, wit at opener for annual festival</B> by Allan Ulrich in the San Francisco Chronicle:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Ankoku butoh (dance of darkness) -- that post-World War II Japanese expressionist movement form that can induce ecstasy and ennui in a flicker of a second hand -- just isn't what it used to be. The shaved, flour-coated, undraped bodies one associates with this cultural phenomenon were, of course, in evidence Wednesday evening at Theater Artaud during the first main-stage performance of the seventh annual San Francisco Butoh Festival, yet there was much more unusual fare to delight and perplex.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/08/03/DD121620.DTL" TARGET=_blank><B>more...</B></A>

From <B>Fun with butoh</B> by Rachel Howard of teh San Francisco Examiner:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Butoh is a relatively young 42 years old and yet so absorbed in the Japanese arts that many bona fide butoh artists there don't call the dance they make by that name. Instead they've spawned a young generation of artists who emphatically claim that they are "not butoh" or "post butoh."<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.examiner.com/ex_files/default.jsp?story=X0803BUTOHw0" TARGET=_blank><B>more...</B></A><P><BR>From <B>S.F. festival presents cutting-edge dance from Japan</B> by Anita Amirrezvani, San Jose Mercury News:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>The San Francisco Butoh Festival, now in its seventh year, is always an exciting event in the otherwise anemic Bay Area summer dance season.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www0.mercurycenter.com/premium/arts/docs/newwave4.htm" TARGET=_blank><B>more...</B></A>

From <B>Riveting dance by ageless Kei Takei</B> by Allan Ulrich, San Francisco Chronicle:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>Choreographer Kei Takei's appearance at Theater Artaud on Saturday evening, as part of the seventh annual San Francisco Butoh Festival, was one of the rarer moments in this dance season.<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P><A HREF="http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2001/08/06/DD104481.DTL" TARGET=_blank><B>more...</B></A>

Can it be true? I recieved a postcard from the San Francisco Butoh Festival today that stated:<P> <BLOCKQUOTE><font size="1" face="Verdana, Arial">quote:</font><HR>This year marks the conclusion of our the annual San Francisco Butoh Festival. After 8 seasons and 10 years of production, Dance-Network's board and founding director have decided to end the annual calendar of events so as to concentrate on refocusing our mission and to build the infrastructure of our organization...."<HR></BLOCKQUOTE><P>Sad news indeed! But if you want to catch the tail end of this year's festival there is still space available. <A HREF="http://home.earthlink.net/~sfbutoh/" TARGET=_blank><B>SF Butoh's website</B></A><P>This is the schedule: Week 1 August 5-9: workshops with Su-En, Ledoh & Hiroko Tamano. The second week (August 12-16) will feature an intensive with Su-En.<p>[This message has been edited by Misa_danseuse (edited June 18, 2002).]