Stars of the AVT #101: Vangeline

This post is one of a series profiling the hundreds of performers I’ve presented through my American Vaudeville Theatre in celebration of its 15th anniversary. Don’t miss the American Vaudeville Theatre’s 15th Anniversary ExTRAVaganza in the New York International Fringe Festival this August!

Vangeline is both the name of a dance/theatre company, and the lady who founded it. The Vangeline Theatre specializes in Japanese Butoh , which has been described as “the collective name for a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement inspired by the Ankoku-Butoh movement. It typically involves playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, extreme or absurd environments, and is traditionally performed in white body makeup with slow hyper-controlled motion, with or without an audience”

A native of France, Vangeline moved to the U.S. in 1993 and founded her company 10 years later. I first presented her at Galapagos in 2004, and later at our Burlesque Benefit at Theater for the New City in 2009.

Here’s a clip of the company performing a slow-moving but powerful piece in the Howl Festival in 2010:

To learn more about vaudeville past and present, consult No Applause, Just Throw Money: The Book That Made Vaudeville Famous, available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and wherever nutty books are sold.