MESSENGERS DIVINOS: Mycelium, Flesh, & Earthly Entanglements
Directed and Choreographed by Iván-Daniel Espinosa
Toured nationally and performed at:
* Roman Susan Art Foundation, Chicago IL — 2025
* Seattle International Butoh Festival, Seattle WA — 2018
* Houston Fringe Festival, Midtown Arts and Theater Center (MATCH), Houston TX — 2018
* La MaMa Experimental Theatre, New York City NY — 2018
ABOUT the choreography:
MESSENGERS DIVINOS is a dance/movement-based installation that engages sonically and sensorially with the bodies of living, breathing fungi and fungal ecosystems. The performance integrates amplified mycelial bio-data sonification and mycelial bioacoustics from mushroom colonies of diverse species with live Butoh dance to immerse audiences into the vibrant, shapeshifting world of fungi and mushrooms.
For centuries, poets and mystics spanning world cultures have regarded fungi and mushrooms as "DIVINE MESSENGERS" glistening with songs of other-worldly knowledge. Biologists have also discovered that trees actively collaborate with underground mycelium fungal networks to communicate extensively and share resources. These fungal networks are highly responsive and capable of perceiving physical touch and sound. But the songs and intelligences of the mycelium and their mushrooms are incredibly subtle. They can hear us, but what will it take for us to hear them? In a capitalistic society that privileges speed and efficiency, what will it take to slow down and feel the vibrant matter that lies so close at hand? In this durational performance, human bodies commune with fungal bodies. Dancers begin by attempting to dissolve the body as we experience it in our everyday lives, to allow for metamorphosis and transformation. In this altered space, our bodies, like the fungal bodies, are part of a larger, atmospheric body: a communal space in which humans are invited to exchange possibilities with every cap and stem, with each textured surface and vibrating entity that emanate songs from the worlds of soil and stone.
Dancers:
* Cristal Sabbagh, Helen Lee, Wannapa P. Eubanks, Keiko Johnson (Chicago show)
* Bobby Levy, Shylah Salas, Autumn Kiskinis, Sheri Brown (Houston show)
* Sheri Brown, Brandon Perdomo, Tytus Wilam, Dove Murray (New York City show)
* Sheri Brown, Stefan Bach, Stevi Kamphaus, Sophia Solano, Gabriel Stranahan,
Emily Paris, Jennifer Diaz, Caroline Basis (Seattle show)
Musical collaborators:
* Omer Gal (New York City show)
* Rocco Strain (Seattle show)
* DASHR (Houston show)
* Christopher Arnett (Chicago show)
Flesh of Earth
Directed and Choreographed by Iván-Daniel Espinosa
Performed at:
* Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art (BMoCA), Boulder CO — 2024
* Seattle ARTS IN NATURE Festival, Camp Long Park, Seattle WA — 2019
* The Center for Creative and Applied Media at The Evergreen State College,
Olympia WA — 2017
ABOUT the choreography:
Flesh of Earth is a Butoh performance that invites audiences to meditate on the human body’s connection to the earth, and on the multitude of ways that human and nonhuman beings are interconnected in our mutual fragility. The choreography challenges Euro-Western (mis)conceptions of decay and decomposition. In a culture which views the body as a mechanism to be trained and the earth as a resource to be exploited, this performance highlights their fundamental symbiosis. From the verdant costumes that are made of decaying plant matter and forest detritus such as leaves, twigs and moss to the choreography of rolling bodies and rubbing skins, this artwork explores how bodies and organic materials decay, decompose, evolve, and transform into something new. With every textured surface and limb gradually shedding on stage, the chrononormativity of late-stage capitalism is disrupted by the spatiotemporal reconfiguration of Butoh dance, which in its etymology signals a downward turn towards and relationship with the earth.
DANCERS:
* Sheri Brown, Stephen Passero, Christopher Arnett, Gabriel Stranahan, Caroline
Basis, Iván-Daniel Espinosa (Olympia performance)
* Stefan Bach, Robyn Bjornson, Stephen Passero, Beth Hollingsworth, Jeremy
Chan, Alycia Zollinger, Jean Jung (Seattle performance)
* Maria Flegas, Sonya Nguyen, Lisa Samoy, Iván-Daniel Espinosa (Boulder performance)
SONIC SOMA: A Live Music Collaboration with TATSUYA NAKATANI
Directed and choreographed by Iván-Daniel Espinosa
Performed at:
* University of Colorado Loft Theater, Boulder CO — 2023
* Pope Marine Building, Port Townsend WA — 2021
* Octapas, Olympia WA — 2019
** The Colorado performance was co-choreographed with Harlan Rosen
and featured a live performance by the NAKATANI GONG ORCHESTRA
ABOUT the performance:
Iván-Daniel is grateful to have collaborated on three occasions with avant-garde musician and master percussionist TATSUYA NAKATANI from Osaka, Japan. Since the late 1990s, Nakatani has released over 80 recordings in the USA and Europe and has toured extensively; performing solo, in collaboration with other artists, and with his large musical ensemble project: the Nakatani Gong Orchestra. Nakatani is renowned in the world of avant-garde music for his radical, transformative approaches to playing East Asian gongs. He effectively utilizes homemade adapted bows in order to play various configurations of cymbals and gongs, creating visceral and hypnotic soundscapes reminiscent of strings, horns, and electronics, incorporated in shimmering layers of silence and texture.
For these collaborative performances, Nakatani performed live music scores in the form of structured improvisations to accompany Iván-Daniel’s dance choreography in the style of Japanese Butoh, creating an immersive and visceral exploration of sound and movement. Within this contemporary work, audiences can also recognize the dramatic pacing, formal elegance and spaciousness felt in Japanese aesthetics and the traditional Japanese music of Nakatani's homeland. In addition, Iván-Daniel offers a choreography in which the performers move through the world with the intention of giving birth to another way of being in the world. Utilizing methods of semi-improvisational dance scores and sonic architectures, the performers attempt to experience the space as the body + the environment, where the self is a kind of transient membrane, with infinite potential for transformation. Rather than referring to the unseen depth between living beings as mere empty space, we are invited to experience space as an immersive environment of corporeal connection enlivened my Nakatani’s powerful music.
Dancers:
* Harlan Rosen, Sheri Brown, Arlo Sage King, Iván Espinosa (Colorado show)
* Hana Shiozaki, Stephen Passero, Bruce Fogg, Cosmo Rapaport, Jennifer Diaz
(Port Townsend show)
* Stevi Kamphaus, Stephen Passero, Cosmo Rapaport, Jennifer Diaz (Olympia show)
** SONIC SOMA was funded and supported in part by a Community Project Grant
from the City of Port Townsend Arts Commission, an agency of the Port Townsend
City Council. This project was also supported by additional grant funding from the
University of Colorado-Boulder Roser Visiting Artist Endowment Program.
