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Wednesday, March 28, 2007
Class notes
Tree, Bubble, Antenna,
Skin, Universe Flower.
Today
we work with plant life, specifically the receptivity and reciprocity it embodies. We will explore the relationship
between inside universe and outside universe. A plant, tree or flower maintains such a delicate relationship with the
world. It is always in harmony with its surroundings. Roots, earth, minerals and water; this connection to the
darkness and what happens below the surface is what enables the delicate branching out and interaction with sky, light, wind,
night and day... moon.
We can relate to this sensitivity through our skin (largest
organ of the body). Today we will focus on this organ and the dialogue or reciprocity happening between inside and outside universe. We make our bodies like antennae.
Maybe a flower is antennae through its
petals, a tree through its leaves… A human through our skin?
In
Butoh we use the image of flower all the time.
It is maybe the best template for how we should dance. A flower never hesitates, in whatever stage it is in it exists
fully and completely. A seed sprouting or a blossom withering; it is always beautiful! Have you ever seen a flower
that was not giving enough of itself?
Monday, March 12, 2007
Thoughts.....
You are standing
in the sea. From your eyelash stretches a gossamer thread connected to the body of a small moth.
It is twilight and this moth is in journey across the ocean. You feel its pull on your eyelash
and in this way you begin moving. You are a dead body, an empty body being towed by a moth across
the immense desert of the sea.
(Imagery used to guide students in a basic “Butoh Walk.”)
For now, form follows.
I am seeking a new relationship to space, body… stage. Syzygy Butoh represents this quest;
to find space within form. We should not flee the earth, and so I do not wish
to flee the body. The stage is sacred space where the dancer confronts the void and invites the ten-thousand
faces of his pathos to dance. His neurosis are the material, his fears and wounds, his perversions, his
hopes and desires, his obsessions and longings, his pure loving, all is welcome within this new space. It
is the life situation which forms the basis of technique. The body is seen as a template,
for the universe imprints everything. The body is like a flower, it is beautiful
on its own.
Wednesday, March 7, 2007
Class notes for March 6 2007
*Find your own
dance! This is the most important thing, the most important point of Butoh. All the
exercises point towards this aim. They mean nothing unless you let your body respond; unless you let your
body react by itself.
*Butoh
is not driven by rational thought. It arises organically from the body, from the moment.
*The imagery we use
in Butoh is very important. The point is to take us out of this rational approach. We
do not imitate. Let your cells react to the imagery, now, immediate, in the moment!
*The universe imprints
everything; you cannot find one existing thing that does not carry the stamp of the world, the stamp of the cosmos.
Your body is a template of the universe. Think of a flower, I think we
would all agree that a flower expresses the essence of the universe. And it does this by just being.
*So, in this way we
take the universe as a costume. We place the template of the body against the emptiness of the void, or
the forces of the unknown. Look, on your skin is the writing of the universe. There
is a constant dialogue taking place. Pierre Jacerme said “the most important thing today is not to
flee the earth, but to perceive in the earth a “new land,” simple and humble. Ultimately this
what we are searching for; a “New Land.”
*So the real question when we are working with imagery is how does it
imprint the body? The body is the link. It
is the link between this small little world called me and the vast expanse of an incomprehensible void. What
is Matter? We don’t often ask this as dancers, but isn’t this the
essence of why we dance? Maybe as we dance over many generations we slowly come to realize that the body
is more malleable than we thought. Maybe this reality consists of more illusion
than we realize. This is ultimately why the interior world, or the world of imagery is so important in
Butoh. Maybe this is more real than what we see with our eyes! Maybe this changes the
body. This is what we mean by “form will follow.” Let the body take care
of itself. Provoke it and see what happens. You will always be surprised!
*Maybe the only
central attitude in Butoh is this question of the reaction of the body. There
is something very surreal that begins to take place when we enter this type of exploration.
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