Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute Announces Unforgotten: Butoh for 9/11
Company:
Vangeline/New York Butoh Institute
Vangeline Theater, home of New York Butoh Institute, will present a performance of Unforgotten: Butoh for 9/11, supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, on September 11, 2026 at 1PM in Times Square. The event is free to attend. For more information, visit https://www.vangeline.com/calendar-of-upcoming-events/2026/9/11/unforgotten-butoh-for-911.
Unforgotten: Butoh for 9/11 is an ensemble work commemorating the victims of 9/11. The 60-minute Butoh dance piece will be choreographed by Vangeline and be performed by an ensemble of several dancers with live musical accompaniment by renowned cellist Katinka Kleijn.
Dancers: Suyi Xu, Zo Roze, Dani Cole, Madelyn Sher, and Eilish Henderson.
Every year for the past two decades, Vangeline Theater has held public 9/11 commemorative performances in New York. For the past ten years, we have performed these offerings in Times Square, with a special dedication for the firefighters, policemen, and women who lost their lives on 9/11. Our annual performances in Times Square on 9/11 hold deep symbolic and cultural significance. The act of performing Butoh—a meditative, expressive dance form—on such a solemn occasion creates a space for collective mourning, remembrance, and healing. Given Times Square’s status as a global landmark and cultural epicenter, the performances serve as a poignant tribute to the victims of 9/11, while also offering an artistic reflection on resilience and loss.
This program is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, and the New York Department of Cultural Affairs, and the City Council.
Hailed by The New York Times as “a player of formidable expressive gifts,” and “Chicago’s first lady of the cello” by Time Out Magazine, cellist Katinka Kleijn enjoys a genre-defying, interdisciplinary career. Classically trained, she has cultivated an exploratory, interactive practice at the fertile intersection of improvisation, composition, performance art and collaboration.
A member of the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and International Contemporary Ensemble, Kleijn premiered Dai Fujikura’s Cello Concerto, written for her, at Lincoln Center, NYC, premiered Anna Thorvaldsdottir’s newest chamber work Ubique at Carnegie Hall, NYC, and is an upcoming featured artist at the Ojai Music Festival 2025. She recorded for the Sony Classical Japan, Naxos and Drag City labels, and presented solo multimedia shows at the Library of Congress and North Carolina Performing Arts.
As a featured VIP contemporary artist at EXPO Chicago in April 2025, Kleijn will perform her solo work Scratching. In October 2025, The Momentary Museum at Crystal Bridges in Bentonville, AK will showcase Kleijn’s site-specific audiovisual installation utilizing the museum’s 80-foot-tall LED tower, at the opening of their annual Momentous Festival.
Much of Kleijn’s work illuminates the cello’s anthropomorphic qualities, often by placing the instrument in thought-provoking new contexts. In 2019, Kleijn and cellist Lia Kohl waded with 30 cellos in Chicago’s Eckhart Park Pool for their devised work Water On the Bridge. Kleijn’s The Body as a Variable Resistor (2021) similarly probes the parallels between human and cello bodies, expressed through a shared-circuit synth. RESIDUUM (2022) pairs Kleijn’s cello with unexpected materials, like 400 feet of mylar or a dress made of soda cans. Her collaborations with the Chicago-based performance art duo Industry of the Ordinary resulted in the widely publicized Intelligence in the Human-Machine (2014), a duet between Kleijn’s cello and her own brainwaves which Time magazine called “a balancing act for Kleijn’s whole body.”
Her situation-based composition Forward Echo, for 11 improvisers (2019), was presented at Big Ears Festival by Ensemble Dal Niente. Inspired by Civil War–era drum commands, it tasks two spatially separated ensembles with reacting in real time to each other’s rhythms. Her silent video project Screenplay in 4 (2021) and her performance Conducted Vault, for Cellist, Synth and Vault (2022) explore touch as a vector for human connection and its new implications in pandemic-enforced solitude.
Kleijn has collaborated with Yo-Yo Ma, Pierre-Laurent Aimard, Christoph Eschenbach, Richard Goode, Lynn Harrell, Jeremy Denk, Stefan Jackiw, and the Marlboro Music Festival. She has taught at DePaul School of Music, Notre Dame University, School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and as Artist-in-Residence and Guest Lecturer at the Banff Centre for the Arts, Canada.
Non-classical recordings include collaborations with the progressive rock metal band District 97, the ambient-folk duo Relax Your Ears, singer-song writer David Sylvian, and for the single “Valkyrie” by Asia with John Wetton. She is part of a working duo with guitarist Bill MacKay, and performs regularly on the Chicago free jazz scene. katinkakleijn.com
Vangeline is a New York–based teacher, choreographer, and dancer specializing in Japanese Butoh. As the artistic director of the Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute, she is widely recognized for her rigorous, research-driven approach to Butoh and for expanding the form’s relevance in the 21st century. Her work actively champions diversity and inclusion within the field, creating space for historically underrepresented voices. She carries forward the legacy of Butoh while infusing it with contemporary relevance—through activism, research, and performance.
Through her all-female dance company, Vangeline creates socially engaged, innovative choreographic works that unite Butoh with activism. She is the founder of both the New York Butoh Institute Festival, which uplifts the work of women in Butoh, and Queer Butoh, a festival centering LGBTQ+ voices within the form. She is also the visionary behind The Dream a Dream Project, an award-winning program now in its 18th year that brings Butoh to incarcerated individuals in correctional facilities across New York State.
At the heart of Vangeline’s philosophy is the belief that Butoh can be a tool for both personal and collective transformation. Her work reflects a deep commitment to integrating the many dimensions of the human experience—beauty and darkness alike—and reintegrating society’s marginalized voices.
Vangeline’s choreography has been presented internationally in Chile, Germany, Italy, France, Finland, Denmark, the UK, Mexico, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. She is the recipient of a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Dance Award for her groundbreaking project The Slowest Wave, which explores the intersection of Butoh and neuroscience. She was also a 2022–2023 Gibney Dance in Process resident artist, a 2018 NYFA/NYSCA Fellow in Choreography for Elsewhere, and the winner of the 2015 Gibney Dance Social Action Award and the 2019 Janet Arnold Award from the Society of Antiquaries of London.
Her work has been widely acclaimed, both nationally and internationally, with critics praising its power, precision, and emotional resonance. Reviews have appeared in publications including The New York Times (“captivating”) and the Los Angeles Times (“moves with the clockwork deliberation of a practiced Japanese Butoh artist”), to name just a few.
Her work extends to film as well, including a starring role opposite James Franco and Winona Ryder in Jay Anania’s feature film The Letter (Lionsgate, 2012). She has also been commissioned by Grammy Award–winning artists Esperanza Spalding, Skrillex, and David J. (Bauhaus).
Vangeline is the author of the critically acclaimed book Butoh: Cradling Empty Space, which delves into the connection between Butoh and neuroscience. She led the first-ever scientific study measuring the effects of Butoh on the brain (The Slowest Wave). Her work has been profiled in CNN’s Great Big Story (“Learning to Dance with Your Demons”), featured on the BBC’s Deeply Human podcast (with host Dessa), and explored in her own podcast Butoh Musing with Vangeline.
She was recently awarded a prestigious fellowship at Wadham College, University of Oxford, for the 2026–2027 academic year. She looks forward to performing MAN WOMAN at the Schwarzman Centre, University of Oxford, in September 2025 and premiering her new solo NAIAD METAL at Lincoln Center in August 2026. www.vangeline.com
VANGELINE THEATER/ NEW YORK BUTOH INSTITUTE aims to preserve the legacy and integrity of Japanese Butoh while carrying the art form into the future, with a special emphasis on education, social justice, research, and archiving. For more info, visit: www.vangeline.com
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