Asia Butoh Gathering informs a critical site for reframing Butoh from the perspectives of Asian practitioners themselves, many of whom are navigating between ancestral cultural practices, post-colonial realities, and hybrid performance vocabularies.

The festival recognizes Butoh not only as a legacy born in Japan but as a living, evolving ecology of practices across the globe, particularly Asia. Bound from different lands and different cultures, this gathering invites artists across the region to share reflections on lineage, transmission, and transformation. The discussion honors Butoh’s Japanese origins while celebrating the diverse ways it has rooted, grown and continues to move forward through their own practices and communities.

CURATORIAL THEME: BUTOH IN THE TIME OF ECOLOGICAL CRISIS

We are at a time where the earth trembles under the weight of ecological collapse, and the Asia Butoh Gathering is a significant point and a meeting ground for Butoh bodies in constant meditation and motion. 

The performance program, Falling Earth, Moving Sky, is the reflection of the earth as our home undergoing a cycle of descent and renewal. It begins with Falling Earth as gestures of extinction, grief, and collapse. The program culminates in Moving Sky, where the body seeks new forms of flight, kinship, and repair. The performances are responses of embodied rituals in a time when the world is unraveling and remaking itself.

Festival Guide for International aTTENDEES

Recommended flights, accommodation, transportation, registration, etc.

February 6-8, 2026
Online registration required for all programs.

Performance Pricing
General Admission 800PHP
Students 600PHP

FILM SCREENINGS, LECTURE PRESENTATIONS & PERFORMANCES

festival guide

OUR PROGRAM

Workshops, retreats, and group sessions designed to spark collaboration, build skills, and fuel fresh thinking.

Round Table Conversations: Butoh in Asia

Film Screening and Documenting Archives

FULL PROGRAM

Performance Program: Falling Earth, Moving Sky

FEATURED ARTISTS

  • TENKO IMA

    JAPAN

  • YUKO KAWAMOTO

    JAPAN

  • KAE ISHIMOTO

    JAPAN

  • SASA CABALQUINTO

    PHILIPPINES

  • SINEENADH KEITPRAPAI

    THAILAND

  • VINCI MOK

    HONG KONG

  • XUE

    SINGAPORE

  • LEE SWEE KEONG

    MALAYSIA

  • RAMOO HONG

    SOUTH KOREA

  • HU CHIA

    TAIWAN

  • ARI RUDENKO

    INDONESIA/USA

FIND OUT MORE

vENUE: WHYNoT
+ CARLOs P. ROMULO Auditorium

WHYNoT is a non-institutional, neutral, independent space, that hopes to facilitate hybridity, in audience and activity. Assembling and intersecting disciplines—visual and performance arts, new media & sound, film, craft, design, fashion, architecture, literature, comestibles, technology and the social sciences—to imagine alternative ways of navigating ambiguity and complexity in our epoch. Inviting a range of participants – from designers and artists, to social scientists, filmmakers, performers and other multidisciplinary agents to question and shape collective futures.

More About the Venue

venue Address

WHYNoT
4F Karrivin Plaza, Chino Roces Ave. Makati City, Metro Manila 2316

Carlos P. Romulo Auditorium
4th Floor, Tower II, RCBC Plaza, 6819 Ayala Ave. Makati City, Metro Manila

Hours
Monday–Sunday
11am–7pm