A bold reimagining of Butoh dance for today
MAN WOMAN is a choreographic work by Vangeline, New York-based choreographer, dancer and artistic director of Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute, that revisits the iconic photographic series Man and Woman by Eikoh Hosoe - featuring Tatsumi Hijikata and Motofuji - through a contemporary feminist lens.
Butoh is a transgressive Japanese avant-garde dance form that interrogates the body's capacity to dissolve boundaries, between genders, between human and non-human, between life and death, and is Vangeline's specialist practice, making her uniquely placed to reclaim this material.
MAN WOMAN uses these black-and-white photographs - saturated with ink and emotion - as both structure and departure point. With fantastical costumes by Machine Dazzle, a visionary queer artist whose work pushes the boundaries between performance, sculpture, and fashion, and a richly textured electro-acoustic score by Ray Barragan-Sweeten, this 21st-century reimagining of Man and Woman centers the female body as sole author and performer.
Women have historically been positioned as mirror or muse in relation to a male counterpart. In the absence of that counterpart, the work asks a fundamental question: what happens when the female body is no longer framed in relation to a male presence, but instead becomes the primary site of authorship, memory, and transformation?
MAN WOMAN playfully examines how a female body navigates, adapts to, and ultimately exits this male-dominated system - not through opposition or violence, but by changing the conditions through which power is encountered. It remains in dialogue with its original conceptual framework while asserting a decisive shift: the female body is no longer responding to history - it is writing it.
"Vangeline ... becomes a complete being - male and female, animal, vegetable and mineral, down to earth and out of time.” - DanceViewTimes
MAN WOMAN premiered in New York in Spring 2026 at La MaMa E.T.C.
Post show discussion:
A live discussion will follow after the performance with the artist and Dr Baldock (women’s roles in Butoh history) deepening the enquiry into gender, memory and queer aesthetics.
We are committed to creating a welcoming and inclusive space and ask everyone to contribute to a respectful discussion during the Q&A.
You might also like:
A Butoh dance workshop with Vangeline will take place the day after, Thursday 17 September, at The Old Fire Station. This workshop runs for seven hours, with a one hour lunch break.
Part of Utopia Now!, a season exploring the role of the arts in making a better future possible.
