Kana Kitty

Tokyo-based Butoh artist who established her own unique style, "Gal Shaman Butoh," merging ancient shamanism with contemporary gal culture. A graduate of Aoyama Gakuin Women's Junior College, Department of Fine Arts, she encountered Butoh through painting and began dancing independently without a master.

Her Butoh is a prayer to unseen forces and all living beings on Earth. By placing her body between this world and the beyond, she seeks to awaken collective memory and sensory perception that transcend time and dimension. Both ritualistic and experimental, her practice functions as a living prayer that reconstructs human awareness.

She has been invited to perform at numerous international festivals, including FRESH WINDS Art Biennale (Iceland), Go.Elans Festival (France), Primitive Sense Art Festival, and WITH HARAJUKU Contemporary Dance Festival, performing also in Switzerland, Norway, Bangladesh, Nepal, Vietnam, and South Korea. In 2021 and 2022, she appeared at MUTEK Tokyo, the internationally acclaimed festival of electronic music and digital art.

In 2023, she co-founded the creative production Sharaku Town with filmmaker Takeru Taniguchi, developing the video series BUTOH × POPS, which reimagines Butoh through popular music.

Her interdisciplinary work also extends to film, music, and fashion — appearing in Blue Period (2024), NHK's morning drama Anpan (2025), and music videos for DIR EN GREY and Tatsuya Kitani.

In December 2024, she presented her 15th-anniversary solo performance "Gal Shaman." Kana Kitty's very "existence" embodies a living ritual — where the mystical, the pop, and the sacred coexist — carving a new path for the next generation of Butoh.