Vangeline Theater dance company, in collaboration with the Laboratory for Noninvasive Brain-Machine Interface Systems, IUCRC BRAIN Center, The Rockefeller University, and the Neurobiology of Social Communication Lab, presents Where the Arts Meet Neuroscience: A virtual expert talk with Prof. Dr. Judith Revers and artist Vangeline. The virtual lecture will take place onThursday, December 14, 2023 at 5:30pm Central European Time. To join the free virtual lecture, click here (Meeting-ID: 388 741 885 184 Code: yC9wdR).
What happens inside our bodies and minds while performing and participating in the arts, and what are the mental and psychological benefits of it? In this last virtual lecture of the year, Prof. Dr. Judith Revers (Medical School Hamburg) dives into the field of performance art and dance with New York-based artist Vangeline, who’s involved in artistic research with neuroscientific methods around the Japanese artform Butoh. Together, they will be investigating interdisciplinary research in Arts and Neurosciences and its implications for the Arts Therapies.
The Slowest Wave/Butoh and The Brain is an art-science performance-research study. This new study investigates the brain dynamics of dancers while they are performing Butoh, a postmodern dance style that originated in Japan, through the use of electroencephalography (EEG) to record the participants’ brain waves. The study is a collaboration between the New York-based Vangeline Theater dance company, the Laboratory for Noninvasive Brain-Machine Interface Systems, IUCRC BRAIN Center, The Rockefeller University, and the Neurobiology of Social Communication Lab (funded by the City University of New York, Rockefeller University and New York University).
In collaboration with neuroscientists Sadye Paez and Constantina Theofanopoulou, neuro engineer Jose ‘Pepe’ Contreras-Vidal, and composer Ray Sweeten, Vangeline choreographed a 60-minute ensemble butoh piece, which is uniquely informed by the protocol established for a scientific pilot study researching the impact of butoh on brain activity. For the groundbreaking art-science study, dancers’ brain activity will be recorded at the University of Houston, Texas, with real-time visualization by multimedia artist Badie Khaleghian of the dancers’ neural activity. Results will then be disseminated in scientific journals.
Vangeline and Sweeten have built on a 20-year history of creative collaboration with a soundscape that is informed by techniques of brainwave entrainment (techniques that affect consciousness through sound). The Slowest Wave investigates through the use of scalp EEG how brain waves during butoh dancing compare to those emitted during other conscious or unconscious motor behaviors, such as speaking or meditating. Moreover, the study will elucidate the functional neural networks of the dancers and the neural synchrony within and between them. This project is meant to foster connections and understanding between dancers, artists, scientists, engineers, and audiences from around the world.
Featured Dancers: Azumi Oe, Margherita Tisato, Sindy Butz, Kelsey Strauch, and Vangeline.
About Vangeline:
Vangeline is a teacher, dancer, and choreographer specializing in Japanese Butoh. She is the artistic director of the Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute (New York), a dance company firmly rooted in the tradition of Japanese butoh while carrying it into the twenty-first century.
With her all-female dance company, Vangeline’s socially conscious performances tie together butoh and activism. Vangeline is the founder of the New York Butoh Institute Festival, elevating women’s visibility in butoh, and the festival Queer Butoh. She pioneered the award-winning, 17-year running program The Dream a Dream Project, which brings butoh dance to incarcerated men and women at correctional facilities across New York State. Her choreographed work has been performed in France, Singapore, Chile, Germany, Denmark, France, Finland, the UK, Hong Kong, and Taiwan.
Vangeline is a 2022/2023 Gibney Dance Artist in Residence and the winner of a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Dance Award. She is also a 2018 NYFA/NYSCA Artist Fellow in Choreography, the winner of the 2015 Gibney Dance Social Action Award, as well as the 2019 Janet Arnold Award from the Society of Antiquaries of London.
Her work has been heralded in publications such as the New York Times (“captivating”) and Los Angeles Times (“moves with the clockwork deliberation of a practiced Japanese Butoh artist”), to name a few.
Film projects include a starring role alongside actors James Franco and Winona Ryder in the feature film by director Jay Anania, ‘The Letter” (2012-Lionsgate). She has been commissioned by Grammy Award-winning artists Esperanza Spalding, Skrillex, and David J. (Bauhaus). She is the author of the critically acclaimed book: Butoh: Cradling Empty Space, which explores the intersection of butoh and neuroscience. She pioneered the first neuroscientific study of Butoh (“The Slowest Wave”). www.vangeline.com
