Press Releases

Naropa University Theater Students Collaborate
with ATLAS Center for Arts, Media & Performance in Experimental Performance
Katsura Kan Directs Students in Unique Beckett/Butoh Artistic Synthesis

BOULDER, Colorado (November 30, 2007)— Combining text (Quad and That Time) by famed playwright Samuel Beckett with the experimental Butoh dance techniques of Japan, Beckett/Butoh is an innovative synthesis of artistic genres created in Naropa University’s MFA Theater: Contemporary Performance program. Directed by the internationally recognized Butoh innovator Katsura Kan, the performance premieres Friday, December 14, at the University of Colorado’s state-of-the-art Atlas Institute in Boulder.

Performed by students in Naropa University’s MFA Theater: Contemporary Performance program, the production is the culmination of a 5-week guest artist residency by Kan, who hails from Kyoto, Japan. Rooted in a preliminary workshop production during Kan’s Naropa residency, Beckett/Butoh includes an underlying “translation project” designed by Kan, Naropa MFA Contemporary Performance Chair Wendell Beavers and the performers. The piece utilizes new translations of “Butoh scores” or “poetic image scores” by first generation Butoh artist Hijikata.

Beckett/Butoh is envisioned as a multimedia collaboration involving poets as translators, original music and film/real-time video. The CU Atlas Institute, the site of the performance, is co-producing the event and will handle technical duties such as computer-generated animation and sound design.

Katsura Kan is well known for his intercultural excursions, fusing Japanese Butoh forms and aesthetics with the Western theatre and ballet canon—most notably The Tempest, Romeo and Juliet, and Giselle. Likewise, he is active in creating Butoh performance pieces as part of what he calls “post-Zen outlet.” After graduating from Buddhism University in Kyoto, Kan studied the Japanese traditional Noh theatre at the Kongo School, went on to form his own multinational dance troupe and, in 2001, began an extensive performance career that has taken him around the world. His teaching venues include the Art Institute of Chicago, San Marcos California State University and Ohio University.

The MFA Theater: Contemporary Performance Program at Naropa University is in its 4th year. The program was created to bring current techniques and aesthetics as well as leading contemporary artists in the fields of dance, theater, and music-theater into direct contact with Naropa’s unique environment of contemplative education and Buddhist heritage. The MFA in Contemporary Performance is home to a community of mature artists dedicated to interdisciplinary experimentation in performance and theater education. This community consists of 34 student participants working to complete the two-year degree alongside distinguished core faculty.

The program has achieved instant recognition for its innovative curriculum and mission to train a generation of teaching artists dedicated to the creation of the highest level of professional performance and articulation of a new pedagogy.

Accredited by the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools, Naropa University is a private, nonprofit, nonsectarian liberal arts institution dedicated to advancing contemplative education. This approach to learning integrates the best of Eastern and Western educational traditions, helping students know themselves more deeply and engage constructively with others. The university comprises a four-year undergraduate college and graduate programs in the arts, education, environmental leadership, psychology and religious studies.

What: Beckett/Butoh experimental performance by Naropa University students
Where: University of Colorado, Atlas Institute, Black Box Theater (http://www.colorado.edu/atlas/building/directions/)
When: Friday, December 14, 8 p.m.
             Saturday, December 15, 2 p.m., 8 p.m.
Cost: General admission, $15
         Student/seniors admission, $10
For more information, call 303-245-4798.

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