Dr. Tanya Calamoneri
Dr. Tanya Calamoneri is an Assistant Professor of Dance at Texas Tech Univeristy. She was previously at Colgate University and was artistic director of the awarded winning Company SoGoNo in New York. Her work and research focuses on Japanese butoh Dance and the integration of imagery in Dance and theatre training.
Butoh (舞踏 Butō) is a form of Japanese dance theatre that encompasses a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement. Following World War II, butoh arose in 1959 through collaborations between its two key founders Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo. The art form is known to "resist fixity" and be difficult to define; notably, founder Hijikata Tatsumi viewed the formalisation of butoh with "distress". Common features of the art form include playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, extreme or absurd environments, and it is traditionally performed in white body makeup with slow hyper-controlled motion. However, with time butoh groups are increasingly being formed around the world, with their various aesthetic ideals and intentions.