A few notes on Butoh:

Historical: 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?

 Workshop Plan:

1.       Check ins

a.       How are we?

b.       How have these weeks been?

c.       What do we want from today?

2.       Warm up

a.       Shaking

b.       Light yoga

c.       Face warm up

d.       Humming warm up for throat

3.       Meditation: body scan

4.       Walking meditation theory introduction- read poem by Zen monk Thich Nat Hahn

Take my hand.
We will walk.
We will only walk.
We will enjoy our walk
without thinking of arriving anywhere.
Walk peacefully.
Walk happily.
Our walk is a peace walk.
Our walk is a happiness walk.
Then we learn
that there is no peace walk;
that peace is the walk;
that there is no happiness walk;
that happiness is the walk.
We walk for ourselves.
We walk for everyone
always hand in hand.
Walk and touch peace every moment.
Walk and touch happiness every moment.
Each step brings a fresh breeze.
Each step makes a flower bloom under our feet.
Kiss the Earth with your feet.
Print on Earth your love and happiness.
Earth will be safe
when we feel in us enough safety.

(from “Call me by My True Names  – The Collected Poems of Thich Nhat Hanh”, Parallax Press, 2005.)

5.       Meditation: walking meditation introduction

a.       Right goes this

b.       Left goes this

6.       Walk around the space normally to break out of it

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

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

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

e.      Your body filled with this space

f.        Your body filled with a quiet intensity

g.      Blood coursing through veins as fire

h.      EXPLORE THE WEIGHT SHIFTING,  

i.         EXPLORE THAT CONSTANT MOVEMENT RYHTYM THAT WE EXPERIENCED WITH THE BREATH

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

8.       Butoh flower walk

a.       Incorporate the walk: with one step looking up to the sun, then next, shrivelling down

b.       Coming to the end of your space walk feel that immense radiating space  

c.       Enjoy the radiant sun upwards WHAT DO YOU FEEL?

d.       Feel your feet rooted

e.       Sway in the wind

9.       Improvise,

a.       Find your nook, improvise from there:

                                                   i.      One part of the body sleeping

                                                 ii.      The other part awakes

                                               iii.      Tests out the boundaries of its physical existence

                                               iv.      Discovers the other part

                                                 v.      Interacts

                                               vi.      The rest of the body either wakes or sleeps

                                              vii.      A larger momentum begins to drive your body

10.   WARM DOWN

a.       Loving kindness meditation

11.   Goodbye’s

a.       Won’t run workshops for at least a couple weeks so I can do my dissertation, meeting with Tony to organise the next block so call him or look out for that in the newsletter

b.       Walk around the uni!

ü Use humour and banter to bring people in

ü Bring it back to being present

ü No right or wrong way

ü PLAYFUL 😊

ü LET’S EXPLORE TOGETHER