International
Many Nikkei (or members of the Japanese diaspora), such as Japanese Canadians Jay Hirabayashi of Kokoro Dance, Denise Fujiwara, incorporate butoh in their dance or have launched butoh dance troupes.
Butoh is also created and performed by non-Japanese Canadians – Thomas Anfield and Kevin Bergsma formed BUTOH-a-GO-GO in 1999 billing it a "Second Generation Butoh/Performance Company." Anfield and Bergsma met in 1995 working with Kokoro Dance.
The multimedia, physical theater-oriented group called Ink Boat in San Francisco incorporates humor into their work. Another San Francisco performance troupe, COLLAPSINGsilence was formed in 1992 by Terrance Graven, Indra Lowenstein, and Monique Motil. The group was active for 13 years and participated in The International Performance Art Festival in 1996. They often collaborated with live musicians such as Sharkbait, Hollow Earth, Haunted by Waters, and Mandible Chatter. The Swedish SU-EN Butoh Company tours Europe extensively. Another prominent butoh-influenced performers is the American dancer Maureen Fleming.
More notable European practitioners, who have worked with butoh and avoided the stereotyped 'butoh' languages which some European practitioners tend to adopt, take their work out of the sometimes closed world of 'touring butoh' and into the international dance and theatre scenes include Marie-Gabrielle Rotie, Kitt Johnson (Denmark) and Katharina Vogel (Switzerland). Such practitioners in Europe aim to go back to the original aims of Hijikata and Ohno and go beyond the tendency to imitate a ' master' and instead search within their own bodies and histories for 'the body that has not been robbed' (Hijikata).
Eseohe Arhebamen, a princess of the Kingdom of Ugu and royal descendant of the Benin Empire, is the first indigenous and native-born African butoh performer. She invented a style called "Butoh-vocal theatre" which incorporates singing, talking, mudras, sign language, spoken word and experimental vocalizations with butoh after the traditional dance styles of the Edo people of West Africa. She is also known as Edoheart.
Yamazaki Kota began exploring intersections of butoh and African dance with Senegalese-based company Janti-Bi, directed by Germaine Acongny, in their 2003 collaboration Fagaala, a piece which explores Rawandan genocide.
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