16th April, 2019

 Historical

o   Founded in 1950s Japan coming out of the Hiroshima bomb, surrealism, german expressionism, mime, flamenco and more  

·         These workshops:

o   Slow movement

o   Meditative

o   Creative

o   Focused

o   Grounding

o   Doesn’t have a particular outcome

o   Gentle exercise

o   Movement outside the routines of caregiving

·         Aesthetically let’s explore asymmetry and passive movement

·         Butoh is not about wrong or right forms, however it is very recognizable owing to its commitment to asymmetry

·         Passive movement, like Brecht’s alienation, where we search for the body and find it strange, and the more we look the more its just not there

o   ‘ Western dance begins with its feet firmly planted on the ground whereas Butoh begins with a dance wherein the dancer tries in vain to find his feet’

o   ‘Even your own arms, deep inside your body feel foreign to you, feel that they do not belong to you. Here lies an important secret.’ Tatsumi Hijikata

WHAT DO WE THINK OF THIS?

A few notes on the practice today: POSTURE

Workshop Plan:

1.       Introduce the workshop:

·         Social place

·         Kind space – to each other and one’s self

·         Place to try something new

·         Creative encounters – non-hierarchical, everyone coming with their own expertise 

·         Tuning into our bodies

·         Moving based on visualisation

·         Improvisational

·         Educational

·         Self-care

2.       Social introductions:

a.       Me: Francesca, coming from bethnal green, I’m here because I like to explore movement with others and I’m really interested in what Butoh and meditation can offer carers, I’m a former carer so it’s close to my heart, I want today to be exploratory and weird and my mood at the moment is ………………………. 

b.       Name

c.       Where you’re coming from

d.       Why you’re here

e.       What you’re wanting from today

f.        Mood at the moment in terms of a weather system

g.       NAME GAME/CIRCLE so we all remember

                                                   i.      PASS ROUND A REGISTER

3.       Warm up

a.       Light stretching, particular focus on the back and neck

b.       Shaking warm up

                                                   i.      EDU Luang Por Jarun

4.       Breathing exercise + posture EDU  In my tradition of Buddhism there is a systematic process in your meditation that you go through. You first look at the breath. Then the breath and the posture. There are four postures: standing, walking, sitting and laying down. Then the breath, the posture and the body, which is broken up into 32 parts (the first 5 are: head hair, body hair nails teeth skin), then you look at the 7 death stages, 9 stages of decomposition and then the breaking up of matter into the four elements: earth, air, fire, water and space. Then you’re a cooked potato. 

a.       So let’s look at our breath AND INVESTIGATE/INTERROGATE WHAT’S GOING ON first while we sit.

                                                   i.      Where do you breath into?

                                                 ii.      Try to breath into your stomach

                                               iii.      How does your posture affect your breath?

                                               iv.      Are there any waves in your body?

b.       Stand and look at breath

                                                   i.      How is it different to before

                                                 ii.      Is there any asymmetry in your body?

                                               iii.      When you observe your breath does it become forced or do you watch it passively?

c.       Breath as you’re walking

                                                   i.      Can you breath in and notice your body as you walk?

                                                 ii.      How do the two pair up?

d.       Breath as you’re laying down

                                                   i.      Rising and falling of the stomach

                                                 ii.      Where is there tension in your spine?

                                               iii.      How does it feel to be part of the ground, an amaoeba breathing?

e.       FEEDBACK TO PARTNER

f.        FEEDBACK TO GROUP

5.       Spend 5 minutes to lay down, NO TENSION, PASSIVE MOVEMENT (maybe the breeze or

a.       Look at crawling within the body, think being eaten by insects

b.       thinking for that body as foreign to you

6.       Spend 5 minutes to get up NO TENSION, PASSIVE MOVEMENT

a.       Where are the waves that naturally come with your breath? How do these link to posture?

7.       Butoh space walk

a.      SOME FORM:

                                                  i.      Stand feet together, knees bent, pelvis tucked under

                                                 ii.      Feet glide along the ground ICE FEET

                                               iii.      Body floating

                                               iv.      Head on a string

b.      WORDS ON CLEARING MIND

                                                  i.      All past, all memory, all self is the surface of your back, and is smoking away

                                                 ii.      Your focus on a distant horizon; all of space and time

                                               iii.      Your body filled with this space

                                               iv.      Your body filled with a quiet intensity

                                                 v.      Blood coursing through veins as fire

c.       EXPLORE THE WEIGHT SHIFTING,  

d.       EXPLORE THAT CONSTANT MOVEMENT

                                                   i.      “Once you start you don’t stop ever” - ISHII

8.        Spiral, stand and wave feeling the breath. Almost like a sea kelp

a.       Play with different speeds

b.       Do you feel like you’re becoming anything?

c.       Any characters come out?

9.       Character work at different back levels

a.       Like a bird with head up

b.       Misery shoulder curcled over

c.       Teenager slumped down

d.       Old person bent over

e.       Beetle at ground level

10.   Big improvise

11.   Feed back to partner

12.   Feedback to group

13.   Warm down

14.   Sum up what we have done, next week we look at the organs, what would you like to see?

• Use humor and banter to bring people in

• Bring it back to being present

• No right or wrong way

• PLAYFUL 😊

• LET’S EXPLORE TOGETHER