Special Butoh workshop with Barbara Bourget of KOKORO, Sep 23-24

Fri. Sep 23, 2011: 6:30-9:30
Sat. Sep 24, 2011: 10 a.m. till 4 p.m. with a break for lunch.
at Teatro de la Psychomachia, Seattle WA

COST: Friday $35-50 sliding scale Saturday $60-85 sliding scale Both Days $80-135 sliding scale

DESCRIPTION:

DESCRIPTION:  Barbara's teaching emanates from a deep and unwavering spirit of pushing one's mental, physical and creative limits.  Her tools for developing immediate choreography are extremely valuable for any dance artist.  Barbara will also be performing at the salon bonsoir Samdi at teatro de la Psychomachia Saturday September 23 along with Danse Perdue.

BIO: Barbara Bourget is the Co-Producer of the Vancouver International Dance Festival and the Artistic Director of Kokoro Dance, the post-butoh dance company that has been named by The Georgia Straight as one of the ten best reasons to live in Vancouver. Barbara has performed ballet, modern, and butoh dance for more than forty years with dance companies including the Royal Winnipeg Ballet, Les Grands Ballets Canadiens, Paula Ross Dance Company, Mountain Dance, EDAM, and Kokoro Dance. Barbara has choreographed over one hundred and fifty dance works including more than forty full evening works. Barbara’s art is characterized by its continual exploration of the feminine, the dark, and the theatrical. Bourget’s work has left indelible emotional impressions on Vancouver audiences. Her critically-acclaimed works include Crime Against Grace, Dance of the Dead, Sunyata, the trilogy of works Sade I, II, and III, F, and four collaborations with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra.

BUTOH WORKSHOP WITH FLAVIA GHISALBERTI

WHO: Flavia Ghisalberti of InBetween, Basel, Switzerland

TIME:  September 30-October 2, 2011.  Workshop times are Friday evening, September 30, from 6:30-9:30;  Saturday, October 1, from 10 a.m. till 4 p.m. with a break for lunch; and Sunday, October 2 from 10 a.m. till 4 p.m. With a break for lunch.

COST:  Friday $35-50 sliding scale
            Saturday $60-85 sliding scale
            Friday/Saturday  $80-135 sliding scale
             Saturday/Sunday $100-170  sliding scale
             All Three Days:  $120-200 sliding scale

DESCRIPTION: Limits.  Flavia Ghisalberti's workshop addresses ways for students to explore their limits, physically and psychically.  She then focuses on how to apply these explorations of inner space to performance.

Body.  Body expressing its existence.   Living body, enlarged to an unbearable limit.  To burst.   Terra incognita.  Explosion of unknown weakness.  Trembling, vibrating life.  Leaf in the wind.  Fluctuation of particles in space.  Death and life, man and woman, animal-human, plant-stone. Limits disappear, dissolve themselves, emerge again … body becomes the limit. Half-life.  In between.

BIO: Flavia Ghisalberti is multi-disciplinary artist of Italian and Swiss descent.  Since 1998 she has worked intensively with Butoh dance.  Flavia’s art explores the limits of the body and the mind and what they are willing to endure.  Although Flavia’s butoh style is primarily independent of a particular butoh school or master, Masaki  Iwana is an important teacher for her.  She co-founded the Butoh group “In Between” in  2003, organized “Butoh-off” the Basel and Freiburg butoh festival in 2010, and has performed and taught in many cities in Europe, as well as in the United States and Russia.

http://www.inbetweenbutoh.com/
http://sib.butoh.free.fr/Flavia_Dance.pdf

Embodying The Spirit : Butoh training with Joan Laage (Kogut)

WHO: Joan Laage (Kogut)

TIME: October 7-9, 2011.  Workshop times are Friday evening, October 7, from 6:30-9:30; Saturday, October 8, from 10 a.m. till 4 p.m. with a break for lunch; and Sunday, October 9, from 10 a.m. till 4 p.m. With a break for lunch.

COST:  Friday $35-50 sliding scale
            Saturday $60-85 sliding scale
            Friday/Saturday  $80-135 sliding scale
            Saturday/Sunday $100-170  sliding scale
            All Three Days:  $120-200 sliding scale

DESCRIPTION: ETS explores endless questions: What is life? What is the human condition? What is the body? How can we experience infinity within the body/mind?  The workshop structure includes exercises and exploration of physical body, elemental body, and ethereal body, and ends each day in free improvisation.  Group and partner work will facilitate participants’ individual and collective journeys.  The workshop draws from her training with Ohno and Ashikawa and her background as a Tai Chi practitioner and gardener.

BIO:  Joan Laage (Kogut) studied under Butoh masters Kazuo Ohno and Yoko Ashikawa and performed with Ashikawa’s group Gnome in Japan in the late 80s.  After settling in Seattle in 1990, she formed Dappin’ Butoh, a company known for its appearances in Seattle’s fringe theater and dance festivals.  Joan has performed and taught in many Butoh festivals: Portland, Chicago, New York, Boulder and Paris, and has been a guest artist at several universities.  She also created work for the Seattle International Dance Festival, artSparks Series in Occidental Park, and Seattle Japanese Garden.  Last May, she was one of three artists featured in a Butoh symposium at UCLA.

Hidden Flowers: Dancing the Seasons Ankoku Butoh workshop with Alex Ruhe

WHO:  Alex Ruhe of Danse Perdue

TIME: October 14-15,  2011.  Workshop times are Friday evening, October 14, from 6:30-9:30 p.m. and Saturday, October 15, from 10 a.m. till 4 p.m.

COST:  Friday $35-50 sliding scale
            Saturday $60-85 sliding scale
            Both Days $80-135 sliding scale

DESCRIPTION:  For this workshop Alex will share methods and image work from Atsushi Takenouchi’s Jinen Butoh.  The workshop will focus on how to dance “all” or “jinen” through dancing the seasons, the life and death of a flower.  The workshop will also use the most basic Butoh performance concept: that the rising body is dancing life, and the descending body is dancing towards death.

BIO: Alex Ruhe is the co-director of the performance group, Danse Perdue, and the Teatro de la Psychomachia, a small private theater and gallery in SoDo, Seattle. He has performed (ritual theater, butoh dance, text) and shown artwork (metal sculpture, oils, photography) in many venues in the states and in Europe, sometimes in conjunction with his teachers, Atsushi Takenouchi, Hiroko Komiya.  For more info: www.danseperdue.org

Butoh workshop with Haruko Nishimura of Degenerate Art Ensemble

WHO: Haruko Nishimura

TIME: October 21-22, 2011.  Workshop times are Friday evening, October 21, from 6:30-9:30 and Saturday, October 22, from 11 a.m. till 2 p.m.

COST:  Friday $35-50 sliding scale
           Saturday $35-50 sliding scale
            Both Days: $60-90 sliding scale

DESCRIPTION: Embodiment of imagery, exploration of sensory experience, guided improvisation and performance, we push ourselves to the edge of possibility seeking extreme qualities of movement energy and playful theatricality. Lead by music, guided words, working in groups and in solo, through the intense training of our internal sensibilities -we become a vessel honing our ability to “be moved” by the image & physical sensation rather than moving of our own will.

BIO: Artistic director of Seattle's multi art performance company Degenerate Art Ensemble (DAE), Haruko Nishimura produces a steady stream of original works of physical theater, vocals and butoh inspired dance accompanied by live experimental music.  Originally from Japan, Nishimura conducts artistic explorations that often involve making extreme aesthetic choices, with the hope of awakening truths hidden deep inside the viewer.  Her work Cuckoo Crow was featured performance at the REDCAT in Los Angeles, (2008) at Rudolstadt's TFF Festival in Germany (2007), an artist residency and workshop at the New Museum, New York (2009).  In spring 2011 Nishimura was invited to perform/create a piece at a residency with DAE at Robert Wilson's Watermill Center, Laboratory for Performance, followed by a performance at Jona Bokaer and John Jasperse's Center for Performance Research in New York.  Her site specific epic Red Shoes was just premiered in conjunction with her group's major exhibition at Seattle's Frye Art Museum (March-June, 2011).  She has also been the recipient of grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and U.S. Artists International among others.

http://degenerateartensemble.com 

Re-construction of your body: Butoh workshop with Yukio Suzuki

WHO: Yukio Suzuki

TIME: October 29-30, 2011.  Workshop times are Saturday, October 29, from 11 a.m. Till 2 p.m. and Sunday, October 30, from 12 - 3 p.m.  

COST:  Saturday $35-50 sliding scale
           Sunday $35-50 sliding scale
           Both Days: $60-90 sliding scale

DESCRIPTION: Students will learn how to be aware of and move the body, according to Butoh principles, so as to gradually betray their habitual movements and way of thinking.  That is, to try to change the texture of the body as a thing.  Then, to play with the new thing.

BIO: Suzuki studied butoh from 1997 and danced in the works of Ko Murobushi.  In 2000 he started the group “Yukio Suzuki Company”.  He gained attention in the dance world for his documentary style of directing and choreography that uses compelling placement of dancers with a strong emphasis on their physical presence.  In recent years he has expanded his activities as a choreographer with projects like choreographing for dancers of  the Tokyo City Ballet Company and participating in TBA Festival (USA), Hong Kong Art Festival,  and Sibiu International Theatre Festival among others.  His work “Confronting Silence” won the Grand Prix at the Toyota Choreography Award.  

THE ALCHEMY OF EMPTINESS: Dancing with authenticity and integrity BUTOH WORKSHOP WITH HELEN THORSEN

WHO: Helen Thorsen

TIME: Friday, November 4, 2011  6:30-9:30 p.m.

COST:  $35-50 sliding scale

DESCRIPTION:  Butoh practice allows us to become vulnerable, open, willing to be in the moment and most of all free, so that every cell has diamond clarity, and congruence. This is the ground of honest works.

Emptying out we can transform our resistance, fear and judgments surrendering to the dance that is bigger than we are, and discovering a self that exists beyond all thought and feeling. 

In this workshop we will work deeply with poetic imagery, Butoh and energy forms allowing our dance to be rooted in the landscape of the deep mystery of presence.  This class will work on refining our concentration, attention, discipline and ability to work deeply in the butoh body. 

BIO: Helen Thorsen has a BA in Dance from Columbia College with an emphasis in contemporary dance & dance therapy.  She has a background of study that includes; Butoh, modern, Graham, and Effort/Shape dance, Yoga, Tai Chi, Skinner Releasing and Pilates.  Her work is grounded in universal principals of open heartedness, acceptance and presence.  Helen is Managing Director of DAIPANbutoh Collective.  Thorsen was Artistic Director of 627 Space in Chicago.  She was a founding member of Yuni Hoffman Dance Theater and Dappin’ Butoh; dancing with them for 10 years. Her choreography has been viewed widely in Chicago and Seattle.  With Mary Cutrera she formed the company LastLeg Into Flightime, which produces their choreography and supports emerging dance and aerial work in Seattle. 

The Energy in Dreams

WHO: Diana Garcia-Snyder MFA

TIME:  Saturday, November 5  10 a.m. till 2:30 p.m.  No break.

COST: $35-50 sliding scale

DESCRIPTION: Butoh is a vital integral practice where body, mind, spirit and shadow get to meet, dance, struggle and rejoice. This workshop use dreams as creative source for exploration. You will be engaging in exercise to develop attention, physical strength and emotional/mental equilibrium. The goal is to encourage change, understanding of the self and  exploration of the unknown with the belief that there are no boundaries besides the ones we create ourselves. Please make sure to write down your latest dream(s) before coming to this workshop.

BIO: Diana is Co-Founder of DAIPANButoh Collective, teaches dance at the University of Washington in Bothell and Pilates in the Seattle area. Her major butoh influences are Diego Pinon, Maureen Fleming, Katsura Kan and Kazuo Ohno. She has performed and taught in the US, Japan, Korea, Ecuador and Mexico.

www.diana-garcia.com

SKIN::SOIL::WATER::BLOOD  A kinesthetic exploration of body and earth.

WHO: MIZU DESIERTO        

TIME: November 18-19,  2011.  Workshop times are Friday evening, November 18, from 6:30-9:00 p.m. With a Butoh Improvisation Dance evening/potluck to follow, and Saturday, November 19, from 12 p.m. till 3 p.m.

COST:  Friday $35-50 sliding scale
           Saturday $35-50 sliding scale
           Both Days $60-90 sliding scale

DESCRIPTION:  An integration of butoh practice and eco-somatics, this interdisciplinary workshop will explore the ordinary/extraordinary, micro/macro relationships between our own body and the larger earth body upon which we live.  Bridging dance and science through internal and external provocation, the goal of this workshop is to develop a greater sensitivity in our bodies and in relationship to place/other/environment. 

BIO:  Mizu is the Co-Founder and Artistic Director of Portland’s Water in the Desert and The Headwaters Theatre. She is an interdisciplinary performer, choreographer and educator whose work explores themes of personal truth, ecological sensitivity and transformation.  A butoh practitioner since 1997, Mizu has studied and performed with Hiroko & Koichi Tamano, Diego Piñón, and Yoshito Ohno, amongst others.   She has taught dance at Portland State University and Prescott College (AZ), as well as facilitated independent workshops throughout the U.S.

www.MizuDesierto.com