Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute presents SOIL:FIELD of AWARENESS, an immersive performance-ritual by Marina ‘Heron’ Tsaplina, joined by a cast of eight performers and a network of interdisciplinary collaborators, on Saturday, September 26 & Sunday, September 27, 2026 at 4PM at Penny Bridge in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. A $22 donation is suggested. Tickets can be reserved at https://luma.com/soilfield.

Taking place at the origin point of the historic Greenpoint oil spill along Newtown Creek, SOIL:FIELD of AWARENESS invites audiences into a deep sensory encounter with the ecological history and living environment of the place.

Through Butoh, puppetry, sound vibration, live drumming, and music, participants are invited to become the voice, movement, and witness to the soils and waters of Newtown Creek.

Presented as NYC Climate Week draws to a close, the work creates a space for audiences to slow down and attune to the ecological rhythms of soil, tree, water, stone, and bone — connecting the human nervous system to the larger environmental systems that sustain us.

SOIL:FIELD of AWARENESS is created by Marina ‘Heron’ Tsaplina, in collaboration with a cast of eight performers and a mycelial network of artists, practitioners, and community partners.

The project approaches performance as a form of ecological listening, using the body, vibration, movement, puppetry, and sound to cultivate awareness of the histories held within land and water and of the relationships between human and more-than-human life.

Creative Team
Butoh-Puppetry: Oscar Suh Rodriguez, Ashley Ragus, Moira Zhang, Stephen Carrington, Marina Heron Tsaplina
​Musician: Cal Fish, Chai Smith
Sound Vibration: Gisela Sanders Alcantara

SOIL:FIELD of AWARENESS is presented by the New York Butoh Institute.

This program is made possible in part by the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs.
With support from community partners Urban Soils Institute, Newtown Creek Alliance, North Brooklyn Parks Alliance, Noo Arts, Holes in the Wall Collective, and grouphug magazine.

Marina ‘Heron’ Tsaplina is a Russian-born, NYC-based award-winning artist, writer and teacher whose work centers the intelligence of the body in environmental healing, medicine, and disability through puppetry, Butoh movement-meditation, ritual, and collective making.

She is known for her boundary-breaking artistic vision that forms new languages of performance. Her work “defines its own terms” (Duke Arts) and is “creating a new language of theater.” (Claudia Orenstein). Achille Mbembe, one of the world’s most profound critics of colonialism, described her work as “breathtaking, deeply playful and incisive.”  

Her vision to connect the public to the intelligence of the soil and Earth brought her to Butoh. She merges Butoh and puppetry animation, and her place-based performance work “deepens conservation efforts by helping people connect to the unseen world.” (Larry McDermott, Algonquin Elder; Executive Director, Plenty Canada). 
Tsaplina’s work has been presented and supported by Duke Arts, Carolina Performing Arts, Penn State University, Georgetown University, La MaMa, Dixon Place, Urban Soils Institute, The Poetry Foundation, Orion Magazine, and many others.

Marina’s medical training curriculum, Your Body is Medicine, brings embodied artistic practice into medical education to restore the intelligence of the body in the Western medical paradigm. She holds a Master’s in Bioethics and Medical Humanities and was a Kienle Scholar in the Medical Humanities at the Penn State College of Medicine (2016), co-founder of Reimagine Medicine at Duke University (2018-2020), and was an invited Artist-in-Residence at Henry Ford Health (2024-2026). She was awarded the 2024 Nancy Staub Award by UNIMA-USA and her work is also featured in the 2026 USA Today bestselling medical memoir by Dr. Rana Awdish.

Tsaplina is a conservatory-trained performing artist who trained with master teacher Kari Margolis for seven years, in addition to studying at the Ernst Busch School of Puppetry Performance in Berlin, Sandglass Puppet Theater, Pochinko Clown, and Vangeline Theater.

Vangeline is a New York–based teacher, choreographer, and dancer specializing in Japanese Butoh. As the artistic director of the Vangeline Theater/New York Butoh Institute, she is widely recognized for her rigorous, research-driven approach to Butoh and for expanding the form’s relevance in the 21st century. Her work actively champions diversity and inclusion within the field, creating space for historically underrepresented voices. She carries forward the legacy of Butoh while infusing it with contemporary relevance—through activism, research, and performance.

Through her all-female dance company, Vangeline creates socially engaged, innovative choreographic works that unite Butoh with activism. She is the founder of both the New York Butoh Institute Festival, which uplifts the work of women in Butoh, and Queer Butoh, a festival centering LGBTQ+ voices within the form. She is also the visionary behind The Dream a Dream Project, an award-winning program now in its 18th year that brings Butoh to incarcerated individuals in correctional facilities across New York State.

At the heart of Vangeline’s philosophy is the belief that Butoh can be a tool for both personal and collective transformation. Her work reflects a deep commitment to integrating the many dimensions of the human experience—beauty and darkness alike—and reintegrating society’s marginalized voices.

Vangeline’s choreography has been presented internationally in Chile, Germany, Italy, France, Finland, Denmark, the UK, Mexico, Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. She is the recipient of a 2022 National Endowment for the Arts Dance Award for her groundbreaking project The Slowest Wave, which explores the intersection of Butoh and neuroscience. She was also a 2022–2023 Gibney Dance in Process resident artist, a 2018 NYFA/NYSCA Fellow in Choreography for Elsewhere, and the winner of the 2015 Gibney Dance Social Action Award and the 2019 Janet Arnold Award from the Society of Antiquaries of London.

Her work has been widely acclaimed, both nationally and internationally, with critics praising its power, precision, and emotional resonance. Reviews have appeared in publications including The New York Times (“captivating”) and the Los Angeles Times (“moves with the clockwork deliberation of a practiced Japanese Butoh artist”), to name just a few.

Her work extends to film as well, including a starring role opposite James Franco and Winona Ryder in Jay Anania’s feature film The Letter (Lionsgate, 2012). She has also been commissioned by Grammy Award–winning artists Esperanza Spalding, Skrillex, and David J. (Bauhaus).

Vangeline is the author of the critically acclaimed book Butoh: Cradling Empty Space, which delves into the connection between Butoh and neuroscience. She led the first-ever scientific study measuring the effects of Butoh on the brain (The Slowest Wave). Her work has been profiled in CNN’s Great Big Story (“Learning to Dance with Your Demons”), featured on the BBC’s Deeply Human podcast (with host Dessa), and explored in her own podcast, Butoh Musing with Vangeline.

She was recently awarded a prestigious fellowship at Wadham College, University of Oxford, for the 2026–2027 academic year. She looks forward to performing MAN WOMAN at the Schwarzman Center, University of Oxford, in September 2025 and premiering her new solo NAIAD METAL at Lincoln Center in August 2026. www.vangeline.com

VANGELINE THEATER/ NEW YORK BUTOH INSTITUTE aims to preserve the legacy and integrity of Japanese Butoh while carrying the art form into the future, with a special emphasis on education, social justice, research, and archiving. For more info, visit: www.vangeline.com