Swedish Butoh Dance Company SU-EN to Bring SOOT to TNC This Weekend

Tonight and tomorrow, October 25 and 26, Theater for the New City will present prize-winning Swedish choreographer and butoh artist SU-EN, the leading representative of butoh dance in Sweden, in "SOOT," a new solo butoh performance on the theme of blackness. In the piece, a solo dancer enters a world of leftover particles, depicting how civilization and cultural human behavior relinquish remnants that cannot be controlled or discarded.

The work of SU-EN is strongly influenced by processes in nature, the struggle and the friction of inevitable changes in life. She explains this philosophy in the context of this dance, writing "Powdery soot makes its own dance in chimneys in cottages and industries, threatening the existence of living beings. The process of organic material is an ever-changing process. The wood is chopped in the spring from logs, burnt in the fireplace in winter, leaving heat to warm our bodies, leaving ash that we throw on the ash pile, and leaving soot--a material disintegrating, dissolving, transforming, changing."

The piece is further explained in a poem:

In a space of incompleteness

She senses her way

Following the fragrance of powdery black

Softly licking a barely visible wound

Listening through fingertips

Skin ripped, healing with an itch

What remains when pain leaves?

When civilization falls asleep?

Bodies shimmering

Embracing the world

The blackness of the dance is a dark symphony in its own. Black drinks in all other color and devours light. In "SOOT," the theatrical space is a space between all colors and the blackness of the room is shifted only through soft color shades.

Prior to this dark-hued performance, the SU-EN Butoh Company (www.suenbutohcompany.net) earned its reputation with large, colorful ensemble works of cruel beauty. It was launched in Japan in 1992 and relocated to Haglund Skola, north of Uppsala (Sweden), in 1994. It just celebrated its 20th Anniversary. The troupe tours domestically and internationally; this piece has been performed in Seattle, Stockholm and Malmö.

Dancer SU-EN, born Susanna Åkerlund, lived in Tokyo from 1986 to 1994. She writes, "In 1988, I was stunned by the art form of butoh when I saw the company Hakutobo perform Nyusho nu Onna at Jean Jean Theatre in Shibuya, Tokyo. Shortly afterwards, I joined open workshops at the performance space Terpsichore that were led by Yoko Ashikawa and the Hakutobo dancers. It took a bare five minutes before I realized this was my destiny. IT was time to bid farewell to other performance expressions and to surrender myself to this butoh method. I was 19 years old, and the search was over."

From 1988 to 1994, she apprenticed with the legendary dancer Yoko Ashikawa (one of the great woman dancers to perform under Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata) at the group Tomoe Shizune & Hakutobo in Tokyo, following which she returned to Scandinavia and established butoh dance in Sweden. She and also holds a nattori license, under the name Kei Izumo, in the traditional Japanese dance form Jiuta-mai.

She established her SU-EN Butoh Company in Tokyo in 1992 and relocated it to Sweden in 1994. It is currently based in Haglund Skola, north of Uppsala. The company tours domestically and overseas in proscenium and site-specific performances, workshops, film productions, projects and lectures. It has performed in Europe, North America, South America and Scandinavia. The company celebrated its twentieth anniversary last year. Its major productions include "Kaze no Cho" (1992), "Shadows in Bloom" (1996), "Scrap Bodies" (1998), the film "Universal Body" (1999, in collaboration with Gunilla Leander), "Atomic" (1999), "Headless" (2000) and "Slice" (2003).

Performances will take place on October 25 and 26, 2013 at 8:00 PM at Theater for the New City, 155 First Ave. (between 9th and 10th Streets). $10 general admission, box office (212) 254-1109, www.theaterforthenewcity.net. Running time :55. Critics are invited to both performances.