15th ANNUAL WRECK BEACH BUTOH — AN UNPARALLELED SPECTACLE FOR AUDIENCES:
KOKORO DANCE COLLABORATES WITH MOTHER NATURE

Kokoro Dance proudly presents the 15th installment of the Annual Wreck Beach Butoh, where fully nude dancers clad only in white makeup will perform on the shores of Wreck Beach at 10:30 AM on Saturday, July 10 and at 11:15 AM on Sunday, July 11 at the foot of the #4 Trail (West of the UBC Museum of Anthropology). Glorious sunshine and 25 degree C. temperatures are forecast. Suggested donation of $5 will help us defray our costs.

The dancers – and some audience members – will shed their clothes and embrace the challenges of collaborating with a spectacular setting provided by Mother Nature. The choreography, created by Kokoro Dance, is inspired by the relationship between our human bodies and the environment. There is no other performance like it in the world.

Wreck Beach Butoh was first launched in 1996 by Jay Hirabayashi and Barbara Bourget – founders of the veteran butoh company, Kokoro Dance. Fifteen years later, it has become the signature piece for Kokoro Dance offering audiences and participants alike a dance experience specifically created for Wreck Beach, Canada’s first and largest clothing-optional beach.

This site-specific, sand and water experience makes full use of all of nature’s elements and is an important source of creative inspiration for Kokoro Dance and its participants. Hirabayashi says, “It continually reinvigorates us and puts us in touch with the earth, air and sea. We bury ourselves in the sand, immerse ourselves in the ocean, spin our bodies until the sky swirls in kaleidoscopic patterns of blue, white and green – sky, clouds and trees blending into a vertigo-inducing terror. Some years it rains. Other times the sun beats down in blinding rays…it is our annual pilgrimage, a ritual performance where we are humbled by our smallness and insignificance compared to the majesty that surrounds us.”

Formed in 1986 by Hirabayashi and Bourget, Kokoro Dance is a Vancouver-based butoh company that fuses the aesthetics of East and West in programs of dance that has earned critical acclaim across Canada and around the world. Kokoro Dance has produced over 1,000 performances and is dedicated to interdisciplinary collaboration and culturally diverse exploration.

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