2025 Festival Artists

Paula Jeanine Bennett (NYC)

Brooklyn-based multidisciplinary artist Paula Jeanine Bennett is an American original with a deep and soulful commitment to the creative path. A movement artist, composer, musician, lyricist and visual artist, she often does projects that combine her skills. She has done myriad global projects and cultural arts activism is key to her work.

Since 2020, she has been exploring the nexus of visual and performance art through ground-based pieces that are meant for movement interaction. Paula has created the butoh-infused dance “Ghost Post”, a response to architecture and war, “Deep Song”, a jazz-butoh dance meditation on a woman’s path of loneliness, “Social Botany”, a meditation on cellular decay through the language of butoh, and “The Wanting Creature” a three-part journey through darkness and light, inspired by the 15th century poet Kabir. All of Paula’s recent pieces incorporate a visual art element and soundscape of her own creation. In April 2025, she was the closing night performer at the prestigious “Butohpolis” Festival in Warsaw.

She is on the staff of the Juilliard School, the Alvin Ailey American Dance Center and the Merce Cunningham Trust. Paula lives on the Brooklyn waterfront and can see the Statue of Liberty from her rooftop.

Top three words to describe butoh: Alchemy. Introspection. Story.

Lean More: paulajeaninebennett.com / IG: @PaulaJeanineBennet / FB: Paula Jeanine Bennett

SPY&DNY (Montreal)

Speranza Spy and Denis Lafond are a creative and performance duo behind SPY&DNY dedicated to puppetry, butoh dance, visual arts, projection mapping, and sound design/audio creation.

Speranza Spir is a Montreal-born artist based in Longueuil who integrates dance, writing, photo-choreography, and somatic practices to cultivate creativity through lived experience. A somatic educator, manual practitioner, poet, and performer, she draws on training in gymnastics, folkloric dance, and ballet. Her work centers the “intelligent body” as key to authenticity and emotional depth. Inspired by nature, she uses movement to foster connection with the environment. Since 2001, she has trained and performed in butoh with masters including Yumiko Yoshioka, Martine Viale, Yuko Kaseki, Diego Piñon, Yoshito Ohno, Eiko Otake, Vangeline, Denise Fujiwara, and Marco Nektan.

Denis Lafond is a multidisciplinary artist with primary interests in creating action art works using mixed media components such as sound design, butoh, video mapping and puppetry. He also as practice in visual and sculptural arts.

Top three words to describe butoh: Opening. Mythic. Absurdity.

Learn More: IG: @spyanddeny / FB Spy&Deny / Vimeo: SPY&DNY

Kevin Segal (Montreal)

Kevin Segal has been creating mostly solo, improvisational work that has often been uncomfortably personal and that makes people laugh since the 1980s. Recent work has been nominated as best choreography at The Montreal Fringe. He has two BFAs: one in Theatre as an actor, (performance,) and the other in Dance as a choreographer, (contemporary dance,) both from Concordia University in Montreal. He is the recipient of a Canada Council Arts grant from the performance art and interdisciplinary art section.  

Kevin became aware of Butoh early in his training. Midway through his studies he had the opportunity to see the work of and to work with Natsu Nakajma. After that, any time a Japanese person came to teach Butoh in Montreal Kevin would take the classes. Sometimes Kevin would continue his research in this area  with westerners who had studied the form and would teach what they had learned.  

Top three words to describe butoh: Japanese. Postnuclear. Improvisational.

Learn more: FB The Company de Courgivaux

Deborah Butler (Connecticut)

Deborah Butler is in her 3rd decade of Butoh study and has taught and performed nationally and internationally since 1994. Deborah was first introduced to Butoh while an undergraduate at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, WA where she studied under doranne crable, a student of Kazuo Ohno. Deborah is a trained Somatic Psychotherapist, licensed Marital and Family Therapist and is currently Project Director for an Early Childhood ARC Program in CT. She resides in the woods of CT with her son and 3 cats.

Top three words to describe butoh: Haunting. Eternal. Spontaneous. 

Learn more: IG @starseedbutoh / FB Kitsune Butoh/Starseed Butoh

Katherine Adamenko (Queensbury, NY via NYC)

Katherine Adamenko is thrilled to host the first ‘It’s Gonna Be Wild’ Adirondack Butoh Dance Festival this year, presented by House of Ladypants, Katherine’s curatorial performance production wing. Katherine is an multi-disciplinary performance artist, butoh dancer and performance curator. Her boundary-breaking and interactive performances have been presented in theaters, festivals, galleries, museums, conferences, and site-specific locations in the US, Europe, and Canada. Katherine's character-driven, body-based work embodies emotions through physicality and feminist explorations often satirizing female beauty.

Katherine is one half of the duo Les Sœurs Cygnes (The Swan Sisters) with Montreal artist Speranza Spir. This is their third in their third international collaboration, having previously presented work in both Serbia and Montreal.

Top three words to describe butoh: Visceral. Evocative. Alive.

Learn More: Ladypants.com IG: @iamladypants / FB @HouseofLadypants / YT: @LadypantsKatherineAdamenko.