Bowels of the Earth by choreographer Iván Espinosa is a meditation on the human body's connection to decomposition.  

Iván's Bowels of the Earth choreography engages thematically with Tatsumi Hijikata’s concepts of death and decomposition in the context of 21st-century ecological crises and global climate change, while embodying decomposition through the transformative power of Butoh dance.  For, decomposition is also the force of nature that radically transforms the dying human self into new organic life: we return to the soil, and become a part of the subterranean earth.  How can a dance of decomposition act as a kind of ecological praxis, reminding us that we are not separate from nature and the environment nor from the decaying aspects of life in which all beings, bodies, and entities are entangled?  In its descent toward the mud and sod of the earth, Butoh invites us to dance and commune with death and decomposition.  In the words of Hijikata, "the dancer, through the butoh spirit, confronts the origins of his fears: a dance which crawls towards the bowels of the earth."

This performance is a fundraising effort for the group’s upcoming performance at the 2025 Vienna International Butoh Festival.

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