Butoh Vérité

Ledoh was born into the Ka-Ren culture indigenous to Burma and Northern Thailand and emigrated to the U.S. in 1972. As a soloist and member of Katsura Kan's Kyoto-based dance company, Saltimbanques, in the early 1990s he traveled and performed throughout Brazil, Europe, Thailand and Japan. In 1998 he founded SALT FARM, a performance collective based in San Francisco. Ledoh continues to research and record the stories, dances, and rituals of his native Ka-Ren culture as raw materials for performance projects, and as a result is a featured artist in a current Berlin-based film production titled Burma Diaspora. In April 2008, he presented COLORMEAMERICA, developed collaboratively with Perry Hallinan over a three-year period with support from the Creative Capital Foundation, at Project Artaud Theater as part of ODC’s For the Record: Dancers Debate the Body Politic series. The piece is currently available for touring.

Circuit Network is currently working with Ledoh and Salt Farm to develop Suicide Barrier: Secure in Our Illusion, to be premiered at ODC Theater in May 2011. The piece will speak to multiple threads of our contemporary experience of this “anxiety age,” yet ultimately draw the audience back to an awareness of their organic roots. Suicide Barrier explores the paradox of how so many of our recent initiatives aimed at supposedly enhancing our security – creating a boundary between “us” and “the other,” and placing timeliness above all other virtues – actually backfire and serve instead to undermine our biologically-imprinted sense for collective safety and well-being. The piece takes its title from the impending addition to the Golden Gate Bridge of a wall and net aimed at catching bridge “jumpers” and will feature Perry Hallinan’s sweeping environmental videography.

Visit Ledoh's web site:
www.ledoh.org