Sheri Brown

Workshops/Classes

Upcoming workshops

» 2008 Butoh study: Practice and Performance (click here to start)
2008 Butoh workshops

Butoh, evolved in Japan in post World War II as a rejection of the western influences that were threatening to cover up essential, grounded Japanese proletariat culture and also as an outgrowth of the modern dance movement. Certainly the total devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had and continues to have influence in the cultural evolution of Japan, but the direct connection of butoh to the bombings is more of a simplified story than 'the truth.' Butoh's birth can certainly be attributed to Japan, but its lineage and progression are, by definition, not easily boxed. (It has even been said that once you know what butoh is, it is no longer butoh, because butoh is always being born...)

Choose a month from the list below to see details about that workshop.

» February 2008

 

Led by Sheri on Tuesdays   |   Led by Vanessa on Fridays

Tuesdays and Fridays 7:00 - 9:00 pm
$10.00 suggested donation per class
February 1st - Classes start
March 4th - Dress rehearsal
March 6th - Performance ($5.00 - $10.00 Suggested donation)

Sheri BrownSheri found butoh in Seattle seven years ago, after 11 years of theatre and street performance. She found it satisfied her need to explore and express the place between words and dance inside her connection to her innermost self, the world, and the universe. She began serious study in San Francisco with Shinichi Momo Komo and has trained with numerous butoh masters since that time including Katsura Kan, Diego Pinon, Akira Kasai, Minako Seki, Su-En, Joan Laage, and Jay Hirobashi.


Vanessa SkantzeVanessa Skantze began performing spoken word in 1993, touring the U.S. with Lydia Lunch and Exene Cervenka. She premiered her solo piece "Eye of the Beholder" at Zeitgeist Theatre Experiments in New Orleans in 1996.

In 1997, Vanessa founded Teatro de la Psychomachia, Theater of the Soul Struggle, whose name expresses the desire for liberation from self-perpetuated barriers that fetter and frustrate the experiential and expressive freedom of mind and body.

Read more about Vanessa here.

» March 2008

Led by Helen Thorsen on Tuesdays   |   Led by Alan Fridays

Tuesdays and Fridays 7:00 - 9:00 pm
$10.00 suggested donation per class
March 7th - Classes start
April 1st - Dress rehearsal
April 3rd - Performance ($5.00 - $10.00 Suggested donation)

Alan Sutherland and Helen Thorsen Butoh thrives when the performer is able to occupy the intersection of complete surrender to the moment and complete mastery of that moment.  Both of these modes must be explored fully in a non-performance setting for them to manifest in front of an audience. 


Helen ThorsenClass with Helen and Alan consists of exercises that instill, through sharing, the deep aesthetic of the butoh body, as well as longer journeys through landscapes of imaginative embodiment.  Helen has danced since she was a little girl, in Seattle since 1983. She was a founding member of the Joan Laage's seminal troupe, Dappin Butoh. Alan began performing butoh in his forties and has danced with Dappin, PAN, the Degenerate Art Ensemble, and Death Posture.

» April 2008

Led by Dk on Tuesdays   |   Led by Maureen on Fridays

Tuesdays and Fridays 7:00 - 9:00 pm
$10.00 suggested donation per class
April 4th - Classes start
April 29th - Dress rehearsal
May 1st Performance at TK VCR (5 - 10 Suggested donation)

dk pan"bodies and memories. like the time you fell over backwards and saw the tarantula on the ceiling... or drowned with pennies in your pockets to weigh you down...or choose-your-own -adventure books eaten in an afternoon..."

dk pan was born in Seoul, Korea (1972), moved to the US in 1976 with his family. His mother was born in Pyoungyang and his father was born in Seoul. dk works in the fields of performance, installation art, and media. He has performed throughout Europe, Japan, South Korea, and US, presenting solo works as well as with music & performance groups - Degenerate Art Ensemble and the Infernal Noise Brigade. His work has been supported by a number of government and foundation grants. In 1999, he co-founded an art & performance group, P.A.N., which has produced over 30 original works for theater, galleries, museums, festivals, and site-specific installations.

Read more about dk pan here.


Maureen FreehillMaureen Freehill is dedicated to the revelation of soul through the body. She has performed and taught butoh, dance, theater and yoga for over 20 years. Her training includes an MFA in Directing Asian Performance and Yoga Teacher Certification. She lived in Japan, performed and studied with butoh founder Kazuo Ohno for nearly 5 years. She is regularly seen performing locally and tours internationally. In the recent past, Maureen was a full-time drama instructor and director of the Seattle Central Community College Drama Department.

Maureen will focus this 4 week series on the heart as a powerul organ of perception and transformation. We will also investigate
impermanence of the body (and all things)
and how that relates to our butoh practice.

This workshop will enhance any performance, creative, healing and artistic practices by exercising imagination and increasing energy flow to reveal hidden gifts of the soul through the body. We will cultivate capacity for freedom of movement, powerful presence and transformation.

Read more about Maureen here.

» 2008 Schedule and Location Information

Performances from each workshop will happen at the first Thursday Art Walk in Pioneer Square in the Vandenbrink Community Room in the Tashiro Kaplan building.

115 Prefontaine Pl. S.
Seattle, Wa 98104

Dress-rehearsal Tuesdays are in the Vandenbrink Community Room in the Tashiro Kaplan building.

115 Prefontaine Pl. S.
Seattle, Wa 98104

Workshops will be held at Universal Fitness Center

517 Main Street Seattle, WA 98104
(between 5th and 6th Aves., in Pioneer Square; sign on front door reads, "Universal Fitness Center")


 

First Thursday performance dates:

March 6th
April 3rd
May 1st


All performances suggested donation $5.00 - $10.00
» 2007 Workshops

Diego Pinon returns to Seattle in September for another Butoh Workshop!!

Diego Pinon's Ritual Mexicano Open Three-DayWorkshop


For all people interested in the transformation of energy through dance

Friday, September 21, 5 - 9pm
Saturday & Sunday, September 22 & 23, 10am - 5pm

 

Chamber Theatre/Dance Space
915 E Pine (4th floor of Odd Fellow's Building)
Seattle, WA

 

$295 before August 1, 2007 / $320 after


To register, email Diana Garcia-Snyder: diana@dgsprojects.com
For details and information, email Diana or Sheri Brown:
sheribrown@gmail.com

 

Diego offers an open and integrated view into the realm of Butoh Mexicano Ritual Dance. In his unique style of teaching, Diego incorporates over 25 years of experience and practice in the fields of Mexican energetic traditions, Japanese Butoh, ritual dance, contemporary modern dance and
theatre. Diego has developed techniques that stimulate, open and recapture energy from the body and senses. He guides in how to use perception, imagination and creativity to develop personal dances from individual experiences. Butoh Mexicano Ritual Dance, is physically challenging and
intense. Diego uses the body to awaken sensitivity and vital energy to transform the limitation we normally percieve in ourselves. This transformation then propels us to new places in our bodies' capacity to dance. The workshop techniques and exercises provide focus, center and balance with clear directions and intentions with which to move the body.

 

Diego Pinon returns to Seattle

 

His Butoh Mexicano Ritual Dance Workshop Includes:

  • Stimulating body work that incorporates intense warm ups that circulate energy also using breath and sound.
  • Explorations of the environment outside through communal and internal connections.
  • An emphasis on personal explorations using the energies of the group and the space that allow for personal impulses to "speak" with the unconscious to expose human and natural qualities through dance.
  • Explorations of physical conditions to expand and suspend energy through the breath.
  • Stretches using the use the center core for balance.
  • Excersises that stimulate and open energetic centers, that provoke and allow the expression of different impulses.
  • A training of the senses, perceptions, imagination, and consciousness that open the internal spaces, sensations, feelings, and extreme energetic levels.
  • An exchange with a communtiy.
  • Support of a personal and ritual dance.
  • Creating and energetic exchange the with an audience.

Joan Laage workshop August 27th, 2007Aloha! - Joan Laage one-day workshop August 27

Announcing a special one-day opportunity to study with Joan Laage, the very special woman who brought butoh to Seattle years ago!
Though Joan now lives in Korea, she will be passing through Seattle soon for a few days and will be offering a four-hour intensive at the Chamber Theatre on Capitol Hill Monday August 27 from 5:30 - 9:30pm. Fee is $40. (More information about Joan and her butoh below.)
To register and/or get further details, please email Sheri Brown.

Embodying The Spirits explores questions: What is the human condition? What is the body? How can we experience infinity in the body? We will concentrate on the marriage of mind, body, and image within Butoh aesthetics beginning with recalling the consciousness of our cellular body and our primal roots. ETS is based on Joan's Butoh training, her Laban/Bartenieff, Tai Chi, and Yoga background, and observances of nature. The training involves vigorous warm-ups, breath and energy exercises, exploration of the body as a fetus with developmental patterning, and primarily nature imagery. Through continual transformation we move from chaos to form.


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 1980s. She first saw Butoh in 1982 in Tokyo. Founded in 1991, Dappin' Butoh had its debut performance in Seattle, Washington in 1991. Since then, as a soloist and with her company, Joan has performed widely in the USA including the Paris, New York, San Francisco and Seattle Butoh Festivals, as well as in Europe, New Zealand, and in Asia. Joan is featured in Sondra Horton Fraleigh's book, Dancing Into Darkness: Butoh Zen & Japan . She moved to Jinju in September 2006, and frequently performs at festivals in Korea.

 

 

» 2006 Workshops

Vanessa Skantze Assisted by Alex Haverfield

September 4th, 6th, 11th, 13th, 18th, 20th, 25th, 27th

Performance on September 28th



Butoh workshops Monday and Wednesday nights in September
taught by Vanessa Skantze with Alex Haverfield
Monday classes will focus on physical sensitivity/possibility. Moving with energy patterns-- spirals, waves, the motion of bones -- in kinship with breath/voice deepens awareness of the unique kinesthetic language of each dancer. Work with partners creates extremities of balance, sensitivity and tension -- bringing dancers to the threshold of the unknown where one is a vulnerable, naked creature.

Wednesdays will explore the unique and harrowing beauty of butoh improvisation with the musicians who will be creating soundscapes for the classes. We will catalyse natural ability to move/vocalize in a ritual opening of body and spirit to what comes through the sound as it pierces, and embraces us.The willing dancer is a subtle instrument sculpting kinesis and feeling in response.

Vanessa Skantze is a multidisciplinary artist whose work embraces butoh dance, voice, percussion, writing and spoken word performance, and metal and stone sculpture. She has practiced and taught butoh dance since 2001 when she co-founded the ensemble Death Posture in New Orleans. She arrived in Seattle in 2004 and collaborates with local dancers and musicians frequently. Both Vanessa and Alex study and perform with Jinen Butoh founder Atsushi Takenouchi. Jinen dances the manifestation of the universal nervous system, the interwoven cycle of life and death, time and space.

Douglas Ridings

October 2nd, 4th, 9th, 11th, 16th, 18th, 23rd, 25th

Performance on October 28th



Butoh workshops Monday and Wednesday nights in October
taught by Douglas Ridings

Ridings has trained and performed with Katsura Kan(SALTAMBIQUES), Joan Laage (DAPPIN BUTOH), Kathleen Hunt(SAMADHI YOGINIS), P.A.N, Dr. Ratna Roy (URVASI) and many others. During the month of October 2006 he will lead a series of butoh classes which will culminate in a performance on Saturday, October 28th. Classes will be held Monday and Wednesday evenings from 7-9pm. Though open to all levels of experience and ability, vigorous physical training should be expected.

Performance, will be entitled SAVIORESS OF THE CEMETERY. Contact 206.850.5390

Haruko Nishimura

November 6th, 8th, 13th, 15th, 20th, 22nd, 27th, 29th

Dress rehearsal on December 6th
Performance on December 7th (1st Thursday)



Butoh workshops Monday and Wednesday nights in November
taught by Haruko Nishimura

Haruko's teaching stems from many years of her own outrageous and unique explorations in dance and theater and are influenced by her study of noguchi gymnastics, Tadashi Suzuki's Physical theater and many years of private study in Butoh with Shinichi Momo Koga, Minako Seki, and Yumiko Yoshioka among others.

This class will emphasize going beyond the external by finding specific ways of embodying dance, imagery, and our often undiscovered limitless energy hidden inside us, and its journeys. Images mined from our imagination and physical memory become tools in our explorations of body states,movement, and choregraphic process.

Since co-founding Degenerate Art Ensemble (formerly The Young Composers Collective) in 1993, Haruko has produced a consistent stream of original and adventurous works combining physical theater and butoh dance with live experimental music. Many of these pieces are large scale works involving up to 5-15 performers and the Degenerate Art Ensemble's 10-17 piece orchestra. Haruko's choreographed works have been commissioned by On The Boards, City, County and State Arts Commissions, as well as a number of private foundations and have appeared in ten countries.

dk pan and Sheri Brown

January 3rd, 8th, 10th, 15th, 17th, 22nd, 24th, 29th

Dress rehearsal on January 31st
Performance on February 1st (1st Thursday)



Butoh workshops Monday and Wednesday nights in January
taught by dk pan and Sheri Brown

In January, Sheri and dk will focus on partnering & body relations, transformation & metamorphosis utilizing meditations on the body- its motions and motivations, presence and physicality as they relate to self, space, and 'other'. Body architecture and 'light weaving' will also play major roles in the course, as well as seeding the new year.

Sheri Brown has performed extensively both as a solo artist and as a core member of the butoh-inspired troupe P.A.N., where she began working with dk pan in 2001. Sheri holds a BA in Theatre from Arizona State University and a Master's in Education from the University of Hawaii; her Butoh teachers include: Shinichi Momo Koga, Akira Kasai, Joan Laage,Su-En, Minako Seki, Katsura Kan,Diego Pinon, Jay Hirobashi, Yoshito Ohno, Kota Yamazaki.

dk pan was born in Seoul, Korea (1972), moved to the US in 1976 with his family. His mother was born in Pyoungyang and his father was born in Seoul. dk works in the fields of performance, installation art, and media. He has performed throughout Europe, Japan, South Korea, and US, presenting solo works as well as with music & performance groups - Degenerate Art Ensemble and the Infernal Noise Brigade. His work has been supported by a number of government and foundation grants. In 1999, he co-founded an art & performance group, P.A.N., which has produced over 30 original works for theater, galleries, museums, festivals, and site-specific installations.

Alan Sutherland and Helen Thorsen

February 5th, 7th, 12th, 14th, 19th, 21st, 26th, 28th

Performance on March 1st (1st Thursday)



Butoh workshops Monday and Wednesday nights in February
taught by Alan Sutherland and Helen Thorsen

The focus of this series of classes will be Rupture/Rapture. Emphasizing image based movement, we will explore common assumptions of what Butoh is and seek to distill its essence for individual use. Using the basic physical and spiritual principles of butoh such as: acceptance, clarity, nature, imagery, alignment, poetry, stillness, meditation, and rhythm as tools, we access and develop the integrity of one's creative process .

Alan Sutherland began his dancing career in the mid 80's. Through Helen Thorsen he was introduced to butoh in the early 90's and began studying and performing it in 1995. He has danced with Dappin Butoh, the Degenerate Art Ensemble, lowcrawlershighflying, and PAN. He has shown solo work in New York, Philadelphia, and extensively in Seattle. He has taught butoh since 2001.

Helen Thorsen, has a BA in dance from Columbia College, with a background in contemporary dance, dance therapy, and counseling, began the study of butoh dance in the early 80's with a workshop with New York choreographers Eiko and Komo (former student of Ohno) . She was a founding member of Dappin' Butoh from '93 to '02. She is co-founder of the dance company Lastleg into Flightime. Her choreography, much of which is site-specific to outdoor locations, has been seen since the 80's in Seattle venues around Seattle.

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