Iván-Daniel espinosa 

As a choreographer, Iván-Daniel’s artwork is highly influenced by his extensive studies of Butoh (舞踏, Butō), an avant-garde form of dance-theatre that was originated in Tokyo in the late 1950's and 1960's.  Iván-Daniel has trained with many Japanese master teachers from the lineage of Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata including Natsu Nakajima, Saga Kobayashi, Koichi Tamano and Hiroko Tamano, and Moe Yamamoto of Kanazawa Butoh-Kan.  Iván-Daniel began his formative Butoh training in 2014 with Seattle Butoh pioneer Joan Laage/Kogut, who continues to serve as his foremost teacher and collaborator to this day.  For over a decade, Iván-Daniel has learned from and worked with Joan Laage on numerous Butoh projects as well as producing Joan's performances in multiple cities across the United States.  From 2021–2027, Iván-Daniel served as the founder and executive producer of the annual Salish Sea Butoh Festival.  Under his leadership, Salish Sea Butoh Festival quickly became one of the largest 21st-century Butoh festivals in North America that consistently produced an extensive international Lineup featuring multiple Japanese master teachers from the senior generation of Butoh as well as renowned Butoh performers from Japan, Europe, Australia, and Latin America. ​

 

In 2025, Iván-Daniel was awarded the CU Center for Asian Studies Japan Summer Research Grant to fund his travel to Japan for intensive Butoh research at Keio University Art Center’s Hijikata Tatsumi Archive, as well private 1-on-1 Butoh training with Saga Kobayashi in Tokyo and with Moe Yamamoto at Kanazawa Butoh-Kan.  He continues to work with and cultivate active relationships with Japanese Butoh teachers in the lineage of Hijikata, such as Kobayashi and Yamamoto, by participating in and producing academic conferences that highlight Hijikata’s choreographic language as well as the artistry of the Hijikata Butoh lineage through the embodied transmission of his legendary dancers.  In 2024, he participated in the inagural BUTOH SCORES, a week-long symposium at Yale University dedicated to the critical study of Hijikata’s Butoh choreography and notational language.  The following year, he participated in BUTOH SCORES MEXICO: DECONSTRUCTING HIJIKATA at the UNAM Museo Universitario del Chopo in Mexico City, a two-week event with Saga Kobayashi, Moe Yamamoto and Kae Ishimoto dedicated to reconstructing and re-embodying the 1970s choreographies of Tatsumi Hijikata.  In March 2025, Iván-Daniel organized and produced his own Butoh conference at the University of Colorado titled ECOLOGICAL INTIMACIES OF BUTOH DANCE: Exploring Gender and Environment in Japanese Butoh that featured headliner performances and workshops by Saga Kobayashi from Japan and Joan Laage from Seattle as well as archival film screenings from the Hijikata Archive at Keio University.  As a PhD scholar, Iván-Daniel's own research includes examining the ecological imagery in Tatsumi Hijikata's seminal choreographies as well as the role of ecological/environmental themes in Hijikata's renzoku kōen performances of the 1970's.

 

Iván-Daniel’s newest artwork titled MycoMorphosis: Dancing with Fungi is a mycology-themed interspecies performance that premiered in January 2026 at The Dairy Arts Center in Boulder, Colorado.  MycoMorphosis is a multimedia performance that submerges audiences into the underground world of mycelium fungi by incorporating a visually-striking, 8-foot-tall sculpture modeled after the subterranean fungal networks of the earth’s forests with Butoh dance, and with live music produced with mycelium bioacoustics and bio-data sonification.  Iván-Daniel’s performances incorporating mycelium fungi have been written about and reviewed in publications such as TDR: The Drama Review and PERFORMANCE RESEARCH academic journals, as well as commissioned for live exhibition by numerous academic and artistic venues.  In 2024, a chapter-length discussion about Iván-Daniel’s artwork with fungi was featured in the Routledge publication by Dr. Angenette Spalink titled Choreographing Dirt: Movement, Performance, and Ecology in the Anthropocene.  In his work as a choreographer, he frequently collaborates with electroacoustic sound artists and avant-garde musicians like Seattle-based pianist/composer Christopher Arnett, Dutch cellist Katinka Kleijn of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, Japanese percussionist Tatsuya Nakatani and the NAKATANI GONG ORCHESTRA to create his multi-layered, sensorially immersive performance environments.  

 

In addition to his work as a choreographer and performer, Iván-Daniel works as an academic scholar in the fields of performance studies, dance studies, ecological theatre and performance, and Japanese Butoh history.  He is currently a PhD Candidate in Theatre and Performance Studies at the University of Colorado-Boulder conducting doctoral dissertation research on interspecies performance and bioperformativity.  He also holds a Master of Arts in Performance Studies from Tisch School of the Arts at New York University (NYU).  Since 2018, Iván-Daniel has been invited to speak and present Lectures on his artistic research at numerous academic forums including the 2026 London Butoh Symposium at Kingston University in London England, the 2019 BUTOH NEXT Symposium at CUNY Graduate Center in New York, UCLA Center for Performance Studies conference, Northwestern University’s Performance Studies Summer Institute, Goddard College M.F.A in Interdisciplinary Arts Residency Program, Mid-America Theatre Conference (MATC), American Society for Theatre Research (ASTR) conference, Association for Theatre in Higher Education (ATHE) conference, College Art Association (CAA) conference, Modern Language Association (MLA) conference, and the Imagining Differently: Research-Creation Practices in Urgent Times conference at York University in Toronto.