Episode 10 is out and our hosts have a conversation with guest Dr. Tanya Calamoneri about Butoh dance theater. Dr. Calamoneri talks about her experiences that led to her role as am artist, activist, and educator. She expands on her work, breaking down the historical and cultural understandings of the art form and how she learned and unlearned the practices within her own work. VOICES FROM THE VERNACULAR MUSIC CENTER, hosted by Chris Smith and Roger Landes, with funding from the Texas Tech University Office of the Vice President for Research and Innovation. Join Roger and Chris as they range across the centuries and around the worlds of oral-tradition music and dance, with guests along the way!
Intro - 0:00
Part I, Path through Dance/Theater - 01:31
Part II, Creating Art - 50:02
Outro - 58:17
Dr. Tanya Calamoneri is a dancer, choreographer, and dance cultural studies scholar. Her primary area of research is butoh dance, a post-WWII Japanese performance form that uses imagery as its impetus and methodology for creating environment, state and movement. She also writes about issues concerning the migration of forms across cultural boundaries in a globalized world. Her writing has been published in Routledge's Theatre, Dance and Performance Training Journal, Dance Chronicle, Journal of Dance Education, and Movement Research Journal, as well as a chapter on butoh pedagogy in the Routledge Butoh Companion and a chapter in Routledge's Intercultural Actor and Performer Training. Her New York-based company, Company SoGoNo, received grants from the New York State Council on the Arts, New York Arts Foundation, American Music Center's Live Music for Dance and Puffin Foundation, and awards from the New York Innovative Theatre Awards.
Previously in San Francisco, she was a member of Shinichi Koga's butoh-based inkBoat, co-directed violent dwarf performance collaborative, co-founded the Experimental Performance Institute at New College of California, and danced with Kim Epifano and Jess Curtis. To support her dance habit, she worked as an arts administrator, serving as the Executive Director of Dancers' Group in San Francisco, and in New York as Co-Executive Director of The Field and Project Manager of the State Department's cultural diplomacy program, DanceMotion USA, administrated by the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
She is currently working on a book project about the history of butoh dance in the Americas, focusing on the United States and Mexico from 1970 to present. She was an invited scholar and performer at the 2019 Cuerpos en Revuelta butoh festival in Mexico City, and will present with one of her Mexican colleagues at the Butoh Next Symposium in New York City in November 2019.
Calamoneri also collaborates on a telematic dance project with Drs. Pauline Brooks of the John Moores University in Liverpool, UK and Luke Kahlich (a TTU Alumn!) of Nova University in South Florida. Dancers in each location share the screen as one company in a live internet performance. The next performance will be during the Spring 2020 Semester.
Degrees Held: PhD in Dance, Temple University | MA in Dance, New York University | BA in International Studies, American University