The beginning teacher whose words are used as the basis for the dance was a committed educator who was thrown into a highly dysfunctional and disadvantaged school. First year teacher Keeler Kirkpatrick loved her students, but she was not able to connect to all of them. The sense of healing and trauma in Keeler’s narrative is so extreme, movement from Japanese Butoh and Chicago hip hop are used to evoke the joy of good day at school and the heartbreak Keeler experienced when her lessons shattered

“Chicago Butoh” has been funded by University of South Florida system creative scholarship grant and, as discussed in the vision statement in Table 4, the show was intended to have five planned performances in the 2017-2018 academic year. Hurricane Irma altered those plans and Charles Vanover and Bob Devin Jones transformed “Chicago Butoh” into a theatre- based performance that stared Jai Shanae. Jai then stared in the Studio@620 version of the show staged in October of 2018.