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Following are the next opportunities to study, expand, and deepen the butoh experience through some of the Northwest's own most experienced and esteemed practitioners of the almost-illusive, always powerful art form.
Beginning the second weekend in October and continuing every other weekend through that month and November, the DAIPAN butoh collective presents its fall workshop series, beginning with Helen Thorsen and Haruko Nishimura in October (more info below), and then moving to Diana Garcia-Snyder and Mizu Desierto (more info to follow). Whether you choose to be at every session or even only one day, I warmly welcome you to continue following your heart and enjoy the increased integration of personal movement art into y/our lives.
Best wishes,
Sheri
DAIPAN BUTOH COLLECTIVE Workshop Series Fall 09
(TK) Toshiro Kaplan Artist Lofts. 115 Prefontaine. Seattle WA 98104
DIANA GARCIA-SNYDER
NOURISHMENT FOR CONSCIOUS GROWTH (NCG)
Butoh practice as a tool for personal transformationNovember 6 & 7, 2009
Integrate expression, knowledge, spirit and community, nourishing higher levels of consciousness drawing from your body’s wisdom. This workshop is deeply infused by Diana’s modern/contemporary dance, Butoh Ritual Mexicano training, meditation techniques, and brain and community research. Workshop will have a component of video.
Cofounding member of DAIPAN Butoh Collective. Diana Garcia-Snyder MFA, Mexican born performer and teaching artists. With more than 20 years of experience in classical ballet and a decade evolving from modern and contemporary to butoh dance, bio-energetics, yoga, pilates, ritual dance and somatic practices. As a student of the European and eastern mystic tradition and meditation she is committed to combining the spiritual journey with movement and expression. She is a serious student of the integration of dance with the recent developments in psychology and neurophysiology.
Contact Sheri Brown 206-940-6078
Friday TIME CHANGE: 6 - 9PM* *participants can come as early as 5pm to warm up. $35 – 50. Saturday 12:00 – 5:00 $60 – 85 (sliding scale)
MIZU DESIERTO
BODIES OF WATER
November 20 & 21, 2009
This exploration of inner and outer environment through butoh image and kinesthetics, will begin from a microscopic look at the role of water in our bodies--through cells, tissues, organs & saliva. Eventually dancing with larger bodies of water, the work will research both the internal and external landscapes of fluidity.Mizu is a butoh dance artist, choreographer, designer and educator whose work is an excavation of energetic, kinesthetic and emotional states. Her dances often mine certain cultural, ecological or feminine realities….seeking to expose the hidden (or sometimes more absurd) aspects of both human and nature. Following the lineage of Japanese butoh in both rebellion and transformation, her dance vocabulary is also influenced by contemporary dance, physical theatre and contact improvisation. Mizu has studied and performed with Yoshito and Kazuo Ohno (Japan), Harupin-Ha Butoh Theatre (San Francisco), and Diego Piñón (Mexico); amongst others. She is the founder and Executive Director of Portland's Water in the Desert Festival and The Headwaters Center for International Exchanges in the Arts.
Contact Sheri Brown 206-940-6078
Friday TIME CHANGE: 6 - 9PM* *participants can come as early as 5pm to warm up. $35 – 50. Saturday 12:00 – 5:00 $60 – 85 (sliding scale
HARUKO NISHIMURA
THE COMMITTED BODY
October 23 & 24, 2009
Through the embodiment of imagery and the exploration of sensory experience, we will awaken new tools already existing in our bodies, pushing ourselves to the edge and cultivating a razor sharp awareness both of our internal experience, and the outward projection of that experience on the stage. Through guided improvisation, soloing, partnering, and moving as a group and rigorous physical training, we become a vessel honing our ability to “be moved” by the image rather than moving of our own will.
Haruko is artistic director of Degenerate Art Ensemble and has produced a consistent stream of original and adventurous works combining physical theater and butoh dance with live experimental music. Her work has been presented by On The Boards, Seattle Theater Group’s Moore theatre, New Museum (NY), REDCAT (LA), TFF Festival (Germany) among others. Her teachings are based on years of performance experience and intensive studies with INKBOAT(SF) and the female Japanese masters of Butoh.
Contact Sheri Brown 206-940-6078
Friday TIME CHANGE: 6 - 9PM* *participants can come as early as 5pm to warm up. $35 – 50. Saturday 10:00 – 3:00 $60 – 85 (sliding scale)
(TK) Tashiro Kaplan Artist Lofts. 115 Prefontaine. Seattle WA 98104
DAIPAN BUTOH COLLECTIVE Workshop Series Fall 09
(TK) Tashiro Kaplan Artist Lofts. 115 Prefontaine. Seattle WA 98104
HELEN THORSEN
THE ALCHEMY OF EMPTINESS
Dancing with Authenticity and Integrity
October 9 &10, 2009Emptying out, we can transform our resistance, fear and judgments, thereby 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.
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, Graham technique, Effort/Shape Laban dance, Yoga, Tai Chi, Skinner Releasing, Ballet and Pilates. Her work is grounded in universal principals of open heartedness, acceptance and presence. Thorsen was Artistic Director of 627 Space in Chicago. She was also a founding member of Yuni Hoffman Dance Theater and Dappin’ Butoh. Her choreography has been viewed widely in Chicago and Seattle. With Mary Cutrera she co-founded LastLeg into Flightime, which produces their choreography and supports emerging dance and aerial art in Seattle.
Contact Sheri Brown 206-940-6078
Friday TIME CHANGE: 6 - 9PM* *participants can come as early as 5pm to warm up. $35 – 50. Saturday 10:00 – 3:00 $60 – 85 (sliding scale)
(TK) Tashiro Kaplan Artist Lofts. 115 Prefontaine. Seattle WA 98104
DAIPAN Butoh Study Series One
Embodying the Spirit: Butoh Workshop This training explores questions of existence philosophically and physically. What is life? What is the human condition? What is the body? Reduction of the physical body and ego-self allowing fluidity and transformation are fundamental to Butoh. We will concentrate on the marriage of mind, body, and image through a process of simultaneously uncovering and creating the body through the power of the mind. Recognizing the body as a carrier of ancient history and the consciousness of our cellular body, we seek an interweaving and balancing of the universal and individual selves. The body is deconstructed to reveal the universal self and expose our primal roots through heightening the elemental or nature body, after which the self is recreated in a revitalized journey of individuation. WWW.SEATTLEBUTOH.ORG
Friday 5 -8 p.m.,
Saturday 10-3pm;
all levels of experience warmly accepted
Sliding Scale Suggested Donation: $10 -$50 Friday night;
$25 - $75 Saturday; $35 - $105 both days.
Trades also possible.
Choose a date from the list below to see instructor information.
May 8 & 9
P.A.N. Sheri Brown & Alan Sutherland Butoh created by dancers who achieve control of their bodies, created by dancers who can access and clearly display discrete emotional/cognitive states sharing movement deeply connected to being, poets who disciplines their bodies, dancers learning to open their hearts. Towards this end have Alan and Sheri taught, choreographed and performed together for a number of years. It is likewise toward this end that Sheri and Alan present a class that explores both the technique and process of butoh, while honoring the mystery that is at the core of this radical movement form. Believing butoh is mastered not through instruction but through sharing, after warming and awakening the body, we investigate how bodies become empty enough, how souls become transparent enough, for a butoh dancer to touch for good the human hearts.
Sheri Brown is a Seattle-based performer ( www.sheribrown.com) who found butoh in Seattle eight years ago, after 11 years of theatre and street performance. Butoh satisfied her need to explore and express the place between words and dance inside her connection to her innermost self and the world. She began serious study in 2000 with Shinichi Momo Koga in San Francisco, joined the P.A.N. that same year, and has since trained and performed with numerous butoh masters since then including Katsura Kan, Diego Pinon, Akira Kasai, Minako Seki, Yoshito Ohno, Su-En and Jay Hirobashi. With P.A.N. (www.prettyartnumb.com), Sheri has presented work in the International Butoh Festival in San Francisco, the Overseas Arts Convention in Korea, and International Mime Festival in Korea (where her troupe won the esteemed Dokkebi Award for most creative, cutting-edge contemporary work). As a solo artist, Sheri has toured Japan twice with Marron of DubMarronics, based in over a dozen major Japanese cities including Kyoto, Kitakyushu, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, and Tokyo.! Sheri, Marron and Daipan will present work in Seattle in early July.
Alan Sutherland began studying butoh in his early 40's. He has performed extensively in America and a little in Asia. He has danced with Dappin, The Degenerate Art Ensemble, Implied Violence, PAN, as well as showing his own unique solo work. A published poet, he has a degree in philosophy, a granddaughter, and the mad belief that the world can be made a better place if the right dance is performed.
May 1 & 2
Danse Perdue/Death Posture (Vanessa Skantze and Alex Ruhe)
"We will work in deep communion with the breath, its myriad intensities in rhythms, as a means of access to the inner space of the dancer's body. From the breath and guided imagery a richer awareness of the intricacy and power of the somatic instrument is gained. Through exploration of diverse energy patterns in the body--spirals, waves, the motion of the bone body, strings, the elements--each dancer intensifies their awareness of their own unique kinesthetic language. The breath/voice will be explored intimately to deepen evocation and to generate movement that breaks out of the human and allows for subtle shifts and a multiplicity of speeds/rhythms.We will seek to always arrive at the threshold of the unknown, where one is naked, vulnerable, open to the spirits yearning to move through us borne on sound and erupting within cells, memory and possession fusing into spontaneous creation. With the musicians who will be creating the soundscapes for the workshop we will work with varying approaches/structures in improvisation. We will catalyze natural ability to move/vocalize in a ritual opening of body and spirit to the energies coming to us through the sound as it pierces, and embraces us. Subtle instruments, we will train to sculpt kinesis and feeling in response to sound in the unique and harrowing beauty of butoh improvisation."
April 24 & 25
MAUREEN "momo" FREEHILL, MFA is known for innovative ways of fusing eastern and western practices of somatics and spirituality and viewing performance as a vehicle for personal, cultural and global awakening. She has been a performer and instructor for over 25 years and holds an MFA in Directing/Asian Performance from University of Hawaii, Yoga Teacher Certification and Dance Therapy training at Naropa Institute. She lived, studied and performed for 5 years in Japan with butoh masters Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno. She leads workshops and performs internationally including past events with Katsura Kan, Akira Kasai, Koichi and Hiroko Tamano, musician Kitaro and Noh master Kanze Hideo. The Pacific Northwest is her current springboard for touring and teaching nationally and internationally. In 2008 Maureen founded the website "BUTOH," a virtual international gathering place for butoh enthusiasts at http:// butohdance.ning.com. In celebration of the 50th anniversary
In 2008 Maureen founded the website "BUTOH," a virtual international gathering place for butoh enthusiasts at http://butohdance.ning.com. In celebration of the 50th anniversary Year of Butoh: 2009 she will present at least one butoh dance daily and post it at http://dailydance.net. Her other websites include: http://maureenfreehill.net and http://lifeartmastery.com. of diverse energy patterns in the body--spirals, waves, the motion of the bone body, strings, the elements--each dancer intensifies their awareness of their own unique kinesthetic language. The breath/voice will be explored intimately to deepen evocation and to generate movement that breaks out of the human and allows for subtle shifts and a multiplicity of speeds/rhythms.
COMING TO OUR SENSES: wellspring for life and butoh practice. A workshop inspired by Butoh founder Kazuo Ohno, EROS and the ever nourishing wellspring of SENSUAL EXPERIENCE. Maureen will guide an initiatory butoh journey through our 12 senses to enliven and enrich your performances, creative ecstatic practices; awaken both mindfulness and playfulness; engage in deeply moving connection with self, other beings and all of life. You will leave the workshop with a sensual "tool kit" of practices that will support and ripen your artistic, and everyday awakenings for a lifetime. Appropriate for every BODY and SOUL.
We will seek to always arrive at the threshold of the unknown, where one is naked, vulnerable, open to the spirits yearning to move through us borne on sound and erupting within cells, memory and possession fusing into spontaneous creation.
April 17 & 18: Joan Laage
Joan Laage studied under Butoh Masters Ohno Kazuo and Ashikawa Yoko, and performed with Ashikawa's group Gnome while living in Tokyo in the late 1980's. She founded Dappin' Butoh in Seattle in 1991, and is noted as a pioneer in bringing Butoh to the Pacific Northwest. As a soloist, and with her company, she has performed throughout the United States, Europe, New Zealand, and Asia. She is featured in Sondra Horton Fraleigh's book Dancing into Darkness: Butoh, Zen, and Japan, and performed and taught at the New York and Paris Butoh Festivals. Joan is a member of the recently formed Daipan Performance Collective.
