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| Some of these German ladies are quite gorgeous, though I got my heart set on other things! |
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| It's all about relationships |
Some of you might have never heard about Butoh. I wish I could tell you what it is... but it is... a bit hard to describe. What to do then? I know! Let's ask our fateful companion... Wikipedia :
Butoh (舞踏 Butō) is the collective name for a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement inspired by the Ankoku-Butoh (暗黒舞踏 ankoku butō) movement. It typically involves playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, extreme or absurd environments, and is traditionally performed in white body makeup with slow hyper-controlled motion, with or without an audience. There is no set style, and it may be purely conceptual with no movement at all. Its origins have been attributed to Japanese dance legends Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno.
(Please, go ahead and read the full article! here)
When I try to explain what it is, I usually say that: it is a form of dance-theater that came about in post-WWII, post-Hiroshima Japan. Thus it is quite... postmodern; bridging the past with the imagination of now. Idiosyncrastically searching for our way through the common denominator: the body. Or I should rather say, through the sub-body. For it's about connecting the inner-outer and the above-below.
It's a lot like clown, but on the dark side. And by dark I don't necessarily mean what you think. It's not just a concept; it's what is meant to remain ungraspable for it lives in the spaces between our pale certainties. It's the darkness of the mystery, of the cave, of the belly, of our mama earth and of her quantum ways…
Hijikata was interested in creating an anti-Western dance. He apparently said something to the effect that whereas all ballet-based dancing aims for that sense of levity - of jumping and rising six feet above the ground - this new form of dance would reclaim and celebrate gravity by reconnecting with what lies six feet below the ground. (paraphrasing) .
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Major Tom to Ground Control..
(Mariannenstrasse, Kreuzberg)
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I remember the first time I saw a Butoh performance.
It was about five years ago, in the East Bay of San Francisco.
I remember how I felt... moved to my core. I remember crumpling feet. I remember gasping mouths. I think I might have stopped breathing for a while, watching these bodies, practically naked yet their skin covered in white paint... these joints contorting in every possible way!
I never thought I'd be doing something like this myself. I don't know that I'll ever be able to walk on my knuckles, or to lift myself up from the ground with only one foot. But it doesn't matter right now. I'm in love!
I love to move through and embody the stories and visions that inhabit my mind. In a way it's a bit like mime, but as dance, and using the whole body: front and back, and outside as well as what's inside the surface of the skin. Oh! And I love to practice getting into that state of total presence and awareness of the other- i.e. natural elements, structural environments, other bodies, etc. In this, it is very similar to clowning.
And how I love to hang from that string of light that comes from the sky and attaches to the top of my head to then come down along my spine. And how I love to feel my feet rooting deep down below the ground, grasping around the Earth... which is, after all, a big ball.
In Berkeley, teacher Hiroko Tamano says "Stillness is the speed of light. Because the Earth is always in motion." (paraphrasing)
I get emotional when I think of everything this means; being drawn and torn between Father sky and Mother Earth, between longing and loss, at the brink of consciousness, fighting between growth and decay...
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| Gravity always wins |
Every morning, we start the class with over an hour of stretching and opening up at the hips. We practice "hanging", trying to loosen every little tension we hold in the upper body.
The pelvic bowl is filled with water. One has to be careful not to spill it... we walk. Our heads float up effortlessly, hanging up.
We do exercises to awaken and fire up the hara / second chakra / tan dien, i.e. going from standing up to falling all the way down, slowly and then faster, without using our hands, and then coming back up the same way. (This constitutes quite an exploration and attuning with the natural spiral motion of all living things!)
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Lunch time in the sunshine, with Yuko Kaseki
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The physical training is sometimes hard. Yuko does things with her body that none of us could ever dream of achieving. It's challenging for my hips, and for my ego. It's a good thing I've become so good at accepting my limitations.
Four days into the workshop and I now have a bunch of little burns all over the top of my feet (and between my toes! wtf?), which is a bit painful, but I don't mind because... I have never felt so much like a dancer! :)
I love to meditate as I'm dancing.
And there is still so much more I could say about Butoh, because as teachers always say, there is no one Butoh. There are as many definitions as there are dancers/teachers. For instance, Yuko's style definitely has some influences from contemporary dance. Back in San Francisco, I took a weekend workshop with Vangeline, and that was almost like trance work(!). And one of her teachers is a man in Mexico, named Diego Piñon. I would love to make my way there and experience his Ritual Butoh...
And here there's a big festival in Barcelona, next month. Before that, there is another workshop taking place in a couple of weeks; this time, with Minako Seki. I wish I could do it too, but it's four weeks long and it costs about 900Euros! I had planned on moving westward after our gig on November 6th. Although... I can always change my mind... After all, Berlin is the capital of Tanztheater and one of the few places in the world where this particular movement is so vibrant...
I'm making myself dizzy right now, hehe! I'd like to end with a quote from Japanese performer/dancer A.Maro:
"Butoh draws its strength from Japanese culture. It began as a spirit of revolt. To break the rules and upset forms. it is the suspension of decision making. We let the body speak for itself, to reveal it. To reject the superficiality of everyday life."
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