Kokoro Dance revives Improv Butoh series after guitarist Tony Wilson's June death

Kokoro Dance is bringing back its Butoh Jazz nights as Improv Butoh—a renamed and evolved version of a series that anchored around late jazz guitarist Tony Wilson, who passed away in June.

Wilson was the regular musician for Kokoro's Butoh Jazz events, which paired live jazz improvisation with dance. When he died, artistic directors Jay Hirabayashi and Barbara Bourget reached out to Wilson's longtime friend and fellow jazz guitarist Cole Schmidt to continue the work. Schmidt is part of the psychedelic chamber jazz ensemble SICK BOSS, the drone improv unit LETTR OPENR, and a collaborative project with cellist Peggy Lee called Forever Stories of: Moving Parties.

For Thursday's show, Schmidt shares the musical side with Alvaro Rojas, a local composer and guitarist whose projects include the Afro-Peruvian jazz-prog outfit GRAN KASA and concert pieces performed by groups like the Turning Point Ensemble and Microcosmos String Quartet.

On the movement side are Bourget and Hirabayashi themselves, alongside special guest Vanessa Goodman, the celebrated artistic director of Action at a Distance who has recently choreographed work including WAIL and the touring hit Graveyards and Gardens.

Improv is the core—both jazz and butoh are built on real-time creation. "We never know what they are going to play or what our responses will be," Hirabayashi has said of the collaboration. "We know that it is always a conversation—a call from them and a response from us that is also a call back to them."

Improv Butoh plays August 21 at KW Studios, Kokoro Dance's intimate underground home base in Vancouver.