Glenn Potter-Takata is a Bronx-based artist of mixed Japanese-descent working at the intersection of Japanese religious ritual and butoh. His work centers a Japanese-American experience, and is preoccupied with the consumer culture runoff from the Japanese archipelago. Born into a Buddhist family in Los Angeles, Glenn was raised in the Shingon and Jodo-Shin traditions of Buddhism, and as an adult has become a practicing Shingon monk. Shingon is notable for its extensive pantheon of buddhas and bodhisattvas as well as its intricate ritual practices. Glenn’s work reinterprets these practices in ways that reflect the values of his American context. By utilizing Buddhist ideas of embodiment to create performances around the body as a historical site, Glenn’s work uproots latent narratives of Japanese internment through performance. Glenn is a 2022 Bronx Dance Fund Award recipient, a current Movement Research artist-in-residence, and has been awarded residencies through Rogers Art Loft, Gibney Dance Center, amandaplusjames, and Lehman College/CUNY Dance Initiative. His performances have also been shown at Triskelion Arts, HERE Arts Center, Dixon Place, Arts On Site, Abrons Art Center, WestFest, and with Pioneers Go East at Judson Church. Glenn received his MFA from Sarah Lawrence College, where he focused in multimedia performance and studied butoh under Kota Yamazaki and Mina Nishimura.
[Image Description: Glenn, in rehearsal clothes and a green beanie, has blue tape across his face in multiple places.]
