Brie-Ana Laboucane (she/they) is a fourth-generation student of Butoh; Cree-Metis student of psychology and philosophy, East and West; and practicing psychotherapist who specializes in relationships & intimacy. Informed by her professional, academic, and personal studies, Brie’s Butoh performance and choreography strives to balance Butoh’s historical integrity with contemporary influences and the potency of each individual dancer(s)’ imaginations & intuition, pushing the psycho-social-spiritual boundaries of Butoh, in a practice she calls “The Art of non-performance”. Whether “performing” as her alias Princess Granny or choreographing performances (which she calls Yōchū “larva-chrysalis”), Brie’s work is a spectacle of vulnerability, ranging from the grotesque to the sublime.

Brie has studied Butoh across North America and Japan, with Kokoro Dance, Kudo Taketeru, Natsu Nakajima, Yoshito Ohno, the Tamanos, Ima Tenko, and Seisaku Nagaoka among others, and holds a Certificate in Japanese Avant Garde and Butoh Dance from Keio University (Tokyo). She tends to the responsibility of transmitting the embodied experience and philosophical underpinnings of Butoh by facilitating circles of care and understanding, mining dancers’ dreams for inspiration. Her choreographic practice and pedagogy is informed by Indigenous governance practices, storytelling, and intuition as much as it is informed by an academic understanding of neurobiology, interpersonal psychology, and metaphysics.