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Resonant Void: A Butoh Performance, CC 9/12
Description
Resonant Void is a Butoh-inspired performance exploring the space between birth and dissolution, presence and disappearance, and the hidden emotional landscapes of the body.
Developed in Tokyo in collaboration with Japanese Butoh artist Motoya Kondo, Yuko Kawamoto, and Minoru Hideshima, and dramaturg Conan Amok, and teachers such as Daisuke Yoshimoto, Yumiko Yoshioka, Marie-Gabrielle Rothie, Yumino Seki, and Seisaku, the work immerses audiences in a stark, minimal world shaped by membrane-like materials such as mosquito netting and plastic sheeting. These objects become barriers, wombs, thresholds, and skins—surfaces through which the performer emerges, retreats, and transforms.
Drawing from Butoh’s traditions of slowness, intensity, and emotional excavation, alongside elements of performance art, somatic practice, and physical theatre, the piece moves through trembling stillness, creaturely transformation, and ritual-like gesture.
Visually sparse yet emotionally charged, Resonant Void invites audiences to witness what often remains unseen: inner movements of feeling, thresholds between identities, and the quiet force of becoming.
In addition to this performance, Joanna Rosenfeld is facilitating a three-day Butoh workshop September 11–13.
Fee Information
- Standard: $40 — covers full program costs
- Member (Become an SFZC Member): $36 — for current SFZC members
San Francisco Zen Center is committed to making Zen practice and the Dharma accessible to all who seek it by offering both a General support fund and a dedicated BIPOC support fund. Please email supportfunds@sfzc.org for more information BEFORE signing up.
Or call 415-354-0360.
Joanna Rosenfeld
Joanna Rosenfeld is an international performance artist and facilitator whose practice has evolved through long-term work in Europe and Japan. Rooted in Butoh, improvisation, and embodied transformation, she creates performances and workshops that invite participants beyond fixed identities into deeper states of presence, imagination, and emotional truth.
Shelley Cook-Contreras
Shelley Cook-Contreras is an internationally exhibited performance artist. She earned her MFA from the San Francisco Art Institute’s New Genres Department, and has taught performance at San Jose State University, New College, and La Esmeralda, the premier university of Mexico City.
Christina Braun
A lifelong dancer, Christina Braun’s art draws upon her deep research in Improvisation, Isadora Duncan and Butoh techniques. She danced with directors Mary Sano, Koichi, and Hiroko Tamano for twenty years.