DAIPANbutoh Collective is fiscally sponsored by Shunpike. DAIPANbutoh Collective is a Seattle-area arts organization established ten years ago as a collective of independent dance artists and educators who share a passion for the evolving art form of butoh. We are devoted to strengthening the presence of butoh in Seattle and the Northwest. DAIPANbutoh Collective is fiscally sponsored by Shunpike,
and supported in part through 4Culture and The City of Seattle Office of Cultural Affairs. We produce the annual Seattle International Butoh Festival, which brings world-renowned butoh dancers to Seattle alongside talented local and regional performers of the art form. We offer smaller-scale performances in a wide array of venues, from parks to galleries to theatres. We hold workshops and classes throughout the year for dancers of all kinds and levels. We also support each other’s artistic development and performance careers as individual artists. Our active members as of 2021 are Sheri Brown, Joan Laage, Helen Thorsen, Diana Garcia-Snyder, Kaoru Okumura, Robyn Bjornson, Alycia Scott Zollinger. Other community members and collaborators include Maureen "Momo" Freehill, Briana Jones, Vanessa Skantze, Alan Sutherland, Douglas Ridings, Mary Cutrera, Gerard Erikson, Tom Belic, Bruce Clayton Tom, among others. We continually enlarge our community by interfacing with artists of various disciplines and seeking avenues for outreach. Co-promoting, producing, and performing, we are a vehicle for cross-cultural exchange with artists from Japan, Thailand, Sweden, Greece, Iceland, France, India, Mexico, Canada, and the United States. We are reaching out as individual artists and as a group to become an integral, intelligent international presence in the evolving butoh aesthetic. We aim to deeply influence our community’s evolution.
