Bringing Butoh to New York

The Japanese dance-theater form Butoh has evolved in many directions since its inception after World War II. Two of those — one rough-edged and intimate, the other sleek and large-scale, both distinctively eerie — pass through New York this week. At Danspace Project in the East Village, the enthralling Mina Nishimura offers “Princess Cabbage,” a metamorphosing solo inspired by the surreal and often grotesque writings of Tatsumi Hijikata, a founder of the form. She’s joined onstage by hundreds of her own drawings and later by three other dancers for a new work, “Celery of Everything.” (Thursday, Oct. 29, through Saturday, Oct. 31; danspaceproject.org.)
The more elaborate production is “Umusuna: Memories Before History,” from Sankai Juku, a troupe both admired and criticized for its Butoh-as-spectacle. Returning to the Brooklyn Academy of Music after nearly a decade, the director Ushio Amagatsu deploys a deluge of sand and eye-popping light in a slow-moving rumination on the world’s origins.