death posture performance history

March 2007 -- THE WOUND AND THE MUCK, A Butoh Intensive Workshop Tashiro Kaplan Artists Lofts, Seattle, Washington
Vanessa Skantze teaches a five-hour butoh intensive exploring the transformation of deep pain into energy. With sound by celadon and natazatán of In the Deep Museum and percussionist Dean Moore.

February 2007 -- SPIRIT INTIMACIES, Bonsoir Samdi, Seattle, Washington
Death Posture (Vanessa Skantze and Alex Haverfield) perform a butoh duet with music by Tom Swafford (violin) and Noise Poet Nobody (prepared stringboard). In the Deep Museum (Vanessa Skantze voice/percussion, celadon soundscapes/implements, natazatán guitar) perform improvised music with Douglas Ridings (voice/harmonium) and dancers moving with and playing Mexican percussion instruments. The audience gradually joined in with voice and additional percussion in a fully participatory evening.

January 2007 -- SUITE FOR KAZUO OHNO, Someday Lounge, Portland, Oregon
Vanessa Skantze, Sheri Brown, Maureen Freehill and Ariel Denham perform a butoh piece in honor of the final dance of butoh founder Kazuo Ohno, 100 years old that day. With music by Japanese guitarist Marron, Monica Schley (harp), Rosalynn de Roos (clarinet) and Nequaquaam Vacuum.

January 2007 -- GEKIKAI, Someday Lounge, Portland, Oregon
Death Posture returns to the structured improvisation form of October piece PELLUCID PENETRALIA with Sheri Brown also dancing and Bill Horist (prepared guitar), Noah Mickens and members of NEQUAQUAAM VACUUM ( percussion) and Douglas Ridings (voice/harmonium). In the Deep Museum (Vanessa Skantze voice/percussion, celadon soundscapes/implements, natazatán guitar)performs an improvised soundscape for three dancers from Vanessa's workshop to move within earlier in the night.

January 2007 -- DESCENT, gallery 1412, Seattle, Washington
Death Posture presents a night of butoh/sound improvisation to benefit creative music haven gallery 1412. Five butoh duets exploring separation and lamentation, longing and erotic communion intertwine with improvised voice and music. Vanessa Skantze duets with Douglas Ridings and Sheri Brown, also creating music for two duets with In the Deep Museum.

December 2006 -- LIQUID BOREALIS, Gage Academy of Art, Seattle, Washington
A two -hour continuous butoh duet danced by Sheri Brown and Vanessa Skantze for the annual Drawing Jam event exploring intimacy, grace and the shifting of time.

November 2006 -- LUCIFER, Zeitgeist Theatre Experiments, New Orleans, Louisiana
In honor of the 20th anniversary of Zeitgeist, where Vanessa Skantze premiered all of her solo performance pieces and danced numerous time with Death Posture, she recasts her spoken performance piece LUCIFER through the experience years of butoh/voice practice and augments it with original music performed live by celadon and natazatán of In the Deep Museum.

November 2006 -- ATTITUDES PASSIONELLES Zeitgeist Theatre Experiments, New Orleans, Louisiana
A continuum performance with Vanessa Skantze creating an intimate relationship with a partial metal cage first as percussion instrument with In the Deep Museum and as dance partner with the original Death Posture musicians (Donald Miller and Rob Cambre, tabletop guitars). An evocation of the extreme physical states of hysteria.

October 2006 -- HELIX OF THORNS, Someday Lounge, Portland, Oregon
A vertiginously assaultive butoh/sound improvisation performance with Tatsuya Nakatani and Vanessa Skantze.

October 2006 -- PELLUCID PENETRALIA, CoCA, Seattle, Washington
A luminous entry into secret places through butoh/sound improvisation with Death Posture and Sheri Brown dancing; Bill Horist (prepared guitar), Tom Swafford (violin), and Tatsuya Nakatani (percussion) creating music.

Slide show to be found at the following links: pellucid penetralia at CoCA October, 2006 http://eyeimagine.com/cocaprecweb/index.htm

September 2006 -- WEAVING THROUGH EYES THE DEW OF FLAMES Tashiro Kaplan Lofts, Seattle, Washington
A structured improvisation performance drawn from a month of butoh workshops taught by Vanessa Skantze with Alex Haverfield. Breath, the elements and longing are danced by seven dancers including Alex Haverfield, Alan Sutherland and Sheri Brown. Vanessa Skantze performs voice and percussion with In the Deep Museum and dances a solo within the piece.

September 2006 -- SALT, Occidental Square, Seattle, Washington
A site-specific butoh performance accompanying the September 11 public unveiling of LOT'S TRIBE, three life-sized sculptures of Iraqis created by Michael Magrath and cast in salt to gradually disappear. Danced by Death Posture, Ariel Denham and Kaia Selene.

September 2006 -- PIERCED BY ULULATIONS, SUSPENDED WITHIN MEMBRANES Wooden Octopus Skull Music Festival, Seattle, Washington
Death Posture and dancer brYan leFey perform with throat-singer Soriah

August 2006 -- HIROSHIMA, LINGERING, CoCA, Seattle, Washington
Vanessa Skantze, Sheri Brown and Maureen Freehill dance bound and tormented with bomb and barbed wire installations on the anniversary of Hiroshima.

June 2006 -- DEATH POSTURE REUNION, The Big Top, New Orleans, Louisiana
Vanessa Skantze at last returns to her beloved New Orleans for the first time since Katrina and dances a frenetic and ecstatic reunion with original Death Posture musicians Donald Miller and Rob Cambre.

June 2006 -- BUTOH PROCESSIONAL, Fremont Solstice Parade, Seattle, Washington
A series of workshops taught by Vanessa Skantze culminate in a two-hour processional performance with Death Posture, Alan Sutherland, Maureen Freehill and others. Drawing from processional rituals sacred and profane the piece explores the penitent rites, the Narrenschiff, the funeral and carnival in butoh and voice, traveling from shame to shamelessness.

February 2006 -- INSOMNIA CHAMBER, ConWorks, Seattle Washington
Death Posture dance one of three duets processing toward and writhing within a clear plastic chamber bearing cowskull and branch detritus. With music by Kristy O'Kelley

February 2006 -- PARASITE HEART, ReBar, Seattle Washington
An evening of butoh performance coinciding with Alex Haverfield's solo art exhibition featuring Death Posture and members of P.A.N. with Bill Horist and others. Utilizing original work and text from Foucault's DISCIPLINE AND PUNISH, the central piece dives into a luxuriantly intimate experience of torture

January 2006 -- BUTO-BYO, Espace Culturel Bertin Poiree, Paris France
Conceived and created by butoh master Atsushi Takenouchi and with Vanessa Skantze, Jean-Daniel Fricker, Yuko Ota and others, An intensive workshop and several street performances in front of the Pompidou Center in Paris culminate in a 90 minute butoh piece which incarnates the cycles of nature, life and death, and those outcasted from society. The desire to break the body in order to embrace more of life in death strongly inspires the dance.

December 2005 -- INDUSTRIAL WALKABOUT, MOCADC gallery , Washington, D.C.
A solo butoh improvisation by Vanessa Skantze with music by Andy Corrigan, Paul Bonomo (SNAX) and Neil Keller in which a primal creature absorbs the force of machinery and metamorphs in fury and awe.

September, 2005 -- SLEEPWALKING APOCALYPSE, Green Lake Park, Seattle
The Death Posture and dancer Helen Thorson create a work as part of Ed Mast's Theatre Squad 9/11 reclamation event in the park.

July 2005 -- HORSE, gallery 1412, Seattle, Washington
A blood invocation unveiling plastinated space/time with Death Posture and Tom Swafford in which the skin of time is peeled back, layer upon layer, individual membranes drifting like cilia in the air currents, yet all are penetrated at once by a sharp missile of light.

July 2005 -- BETWEEN THE DOG AND THE WOLF, gallery 1412, Seattle Washington
Death Posture dance a voluptuous tearing of aurical fabrics to the fierce guitar explorations of Marcia Bassett and Tom Carter

June 2005 -- BLACK TEARS, Theater Schmeater, Seattle Washington
Death Posture with Bill Horist unveil the dark streams of a ferocious tenderness.

June 2005 -- TINTINNABULATIONS, Tacoma Street Fair, Tacoma, Washington
Death Posture, Sheri Brown and Alan Sutherland perform a structured butoh improvisation with Noah Mickens' metal percussion.

June 2005 -- THE MIGRANT LIVES OF THE PERFECTIONS, LINESCAPE event at CoCA, Seattle, Washington
A piece about God's first botched abortion attempt, with dancers Mandy Gulla and brYan leFey and violinist Tom Swafford.

Slide show to be found at the following links: The Migrant Lives of the Perfections at the LINESCAPE multidisciplinary exhibition in May, June 2005; Death Posture is at the beginning of this series. http://eyeimagine.com/components/eyeart/danceandtheater/linesweb/index.htm

May 2005 -- IN THE GARDEN: AN EVENING OF IMPROVISATIONAL BUTOH DANCE, MOCADC gallery, Washington, D.C.
A solo dance performance celebrating and mourning eternal return by Vanessa Skantze with D.C. musician and longtime friend Andrew J. Corrigan.

Vanessa Skantze solo improvisation piece at MOCADC gallery, Washington D.C. http://www.mocadc.org/archives/skantze/butoh.html Review of performance, click on Video Caps to view photos

May 2005 -- RECASTING MEMORY: A SHUDDER IN SPACETIME PERSISTING Chez Bushwick performance space and ORT Brooklyn, New York
A collaborative event spanning two evenings in which dancer Vanessa Skantze, percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani and bassist Reuben Radding shed human carapace to reveal flesh and sonic apocrypha for the forgotten and the not yet known to manifest through.

April 2005 -- INTIMATIONS OF GRACE, Seattle Erotic Arts Festival at ConWorks, Seattle
An exploration of erotic energy transversing gender species color and sound danced by Death Posture, Alan Sutherland, Mandy Gulla, and Sam Richert

March 2005 -- DARWIN'S GENTLEMEN'S CLUB, gallery 1412, Seattle, Washington
The Death Posture with violinist Tom Swafford, bassist Nathan Levine and drummer Dave Abramson create a lurid salon wherein nature is desired, objectified, paid for, humiliated, seen but not touched.

Slide show to be found at the following links: Darwin's Gentlemen's Club at Studio 1412 in July of 2005 http://eyeimagine.com/components/eyeart/danceandtheater/posture/index.htm

March 2005 -- TANDAVA, the perfect room, Seattle, Washington
A penetration into Indian mythology utilizing butoh and Indian dance directed by Douglas Ridings. With Vanessa Skantze as Shiva, Alex Haverfield as Parvati/Shakti and Alan Sutherland as Nandi the sacred bull and the Initiate.

October 2004 -- TO ASH, Benefit Party for Arts Symposium at Coral Lampert Studio, New Orleans
A performance by Vanessa Skantze with musicians Donald Miller and Rob Cambre in which fragmentation and loneliness are experienced on around and with artist Coral Lampert's cast iron sculptures.

October 2004 -- RIVER GIRL, Zeitgeist Theatre Experiments, New Orleans, LA
Vanessa's farewell New Orleans performance: an elegy, a ravishing-- with musicians Donald Miller, Rob Cambre and special guest vocalist Claudia Copeland.

August 2004 -- SPACE: STONE FLOWER, The Gold Mine Saloon & Gallery, New Orleans, LA
A Death Posture rage against the automated: life Vs. existence; includes text reading and painful butoh performance involving tender and violent interactions with stones collected in New Mexico.

July 2004 -- GEN, Angel Orensanz Foundation, New York, NY
Directed by butoh master Atsushi Takenouchi with Alex Haverfield, Vanessa Skantze, Moeno Watanabe, Jean-Daniel Fricker, Kathi Von Koerber, etc. "GEN" means a source of all the river that embraces Yin (darkness) and Yang (lightness). Endless war never stops isolating our body in this society from this world. The river of the universe since the big bang has kept on flowing. If so, then each of us who is on different rivers should have been connected with one river. This performance "GEN" makes us travel through this river; to its origin, each by our original canoe called the body.

July 2004 -- THE WELL, BPM Performance Space & Gallery, Brooklyn, NY
The Death Posture with guest percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani creates a butoh/sound collaboration culminating in an action painting and the abandonment of a dancer, alone among the crowd-wolves.

June 2004 -- MOURNING RITUAL and WITHERED WOMAN, SUCCULENT CARAPACE, Zeitgeist Theatre Experiments, 100 Bloomsdays event, New Orleans, LA
An old woman's past refuses to conform to her final desire: to find preciousness in her memories.