Butoh Workshops this weekend

I'll be attending Sunday's workshop. Totally psyched!

Workshop #1
Syzygy Butoh Workshop
Taught by Nathan Montgomery

Saturday, Jan 9, 2010
2:00-5:00 pm
Studio 210, 3435 Cesar Chavez (@Valencia)
San Francisco
$35

In this workshop we will focus on recovering and cultivating physical dignity in the body and expression. Syzygy Butoh proposes a dance training in which we develop energetic presence in order to liberate our impulses and learn to work with all our energetic qualities. We start by exploring the empty body, or corpse body. From there we move into progressive explorations of standing, walking, running, twisting and jumping. By focusing on these simple physical actions we can recover basic energetic principles of presence in the dance. We then move into improvisational explorations that challenge us to reach beyond our normal movement patterns and explore our connection to multiple dimensions of body, space, time and content. For example, we may explore what the quality of stone has to teach us in dance, or the quality of paper, flower, wind, water, etc. Come with a beginners mind. No previous dance training necessary.

Nathan teaches and performs throughout the United States. He has studied Butoh for over ten years with Diego Pinon, as well as spent time in Japan with the Ohnos. He works in collaboration with such groups as Human Nature in Arizona and the CarpetBag Brigade of San Francisco. He co-created TinHouse Experimental Dance Theatre in Boulder, CO, and continues to base his productions there . In classic proscenium, on mountaintops, or in the town junkyard Syzygy performs in diverse venues. and settings. For Nathan, while the work is originally connected to the seed of Japanese Butoh, Syzygy grows as an American Butoh.

Workshop #2
The Poetic Body
Butoh: connection, spirit and form
Taught by Jennifer Hicks

Sunday Jan 10, 2010
12:00-3:00 pm
Studio 210, 3435 Cesar Chavez (@ Valencia)
San Francisco
$35

The Poetic Body is a movement laboratory for those interested in traveling deep into movement consciousness in the context of dance/theatre. Topics of exploration toward choreography may include personal memory, embodying imagery, awareness training, translating poetry to movement, puppetry techniques for the body, meditation, physical stamina training and choreography/designing space. Splicing metaphors and specificity of form, we become the worlds and carry its atmospheres. Exercises range from slow internal focus to chaos. The physical and energetic body transforms through birth, influence and letting go, revealing a new relationship to imagery, the audience, and body/mind. Combining movement imagery with space, shape, time, gesture, relationship and kinesthetic delight. Spirit, space, atmosphere, partner exercises meet though form.

Ms Hicks believes form must go hand in hand with spirit for the theater, not one chancing the other. We will explore pure kinesthetic joy of moving and finding connection to space, self, others and spirit as well as finding a repeatable form. We will work with form/technique letting spirit erupt from inside. We dance from metaphors and experience, colliding worlds open to a river of thoughts and feelings. We move from earth, from emptiness, from strength and from turmoil. From specificity, we create, through spirit we dance. Students will work as a group, solo and in partners.

Jennifer is of the 3rd wave of butoh artists which began dancing in the United States in the late 1980's/early 1990's. She has studied with many Japanese Butoh Masters, but her main mentor is Katsura Kan. She has also been influenced greatly by her study with Maureen Fleming and early training in butoh with artists such as the Tamanos at the San Francisco Butoh Festivals. Her other influences include modern dance, Body Mind Centering, Yoga, The Viewpoints, Shintaido and Trancedance. These aspects are taught in unique combination creating an ongoing investigation into how one is to take Butoh, as a viable performance technique, into the next century. Let's talk, dance, and share ideas.

Basic class structure: brief meditation - warm-ups to unify the group, stretch and train the body/mind - dynamic group, partner or solo exercises designed to build spirit, energy and focus - work with butoh kata or forms - combine into dance/set in space and time - closing.


Once again, to sign up for these classes, or for further info on the performances, please contact:
Bob Webb
bobwebb20@hotmail.com
415-821-7124