Today we began our week-long Butoh intensive.
For five and a half hours each day, we will be taking class only on Butoh with
the same two teachers.
At Beloit, I had taken a workshop on Butoh
before and had really not enjoyed it. In that class, it had been much more like
meditation than dance, and, due to not loving to meditate personally, I didn’t
end up enjoying it. So I entered this week filled with trepidation, and the
belief that, by Wednesday, we would all being having strong reactions to only
doing slow movement all of the time.
However, our class was definitely not what I
expected, and I really enjoyed what we did. In the morning, we warmed up with
the instructor who was in Pina Bausch’s company in Germany (how cool is
that?!), and then the other instructor had us walk slowly through the space,
walk to a partner and hug them without contact, and then do a group improv.
Honestly, the only things I found unenjoyable were that my knee pain really
limited my movement (like how in the partner hug exercise we had to slowly go
to the ground and then back up while still connected. Ow) and one piece of
imagery that I think is going to be used constantly this week. The imagery is
that, whenever you move, your gaze reaches so far out that it eventually comes
back around and you see your own back. Now I know seeing around the globe
wouldn’t work because the spherical shape would cause the straight sight line
to break. However, if my line of sight lines tangent to the earth and goes off
into space, then it will eventually continue in a straight line back to me. And
I don’t think I can handle that many light-years every time I shift my gaze.
Anyways, in the afternoon, we did a new warm
up (one that was much easier on my knees) and more partner hugs. Only this time,
we got to physically touch our partners, and, when we were told to pretend the
exercise was the last time we would see each other, a lot of people got
emotional. I know my partner ended up crying, and I nearly cried myself. We
then repeated the exercise but with singing (not nearly as powerful) and then
chose a song for ourselves (I picked an old lullaby that I love). The
instructors then had us walk to a set spot in the room while singing, then stop
and say our name and where we were from. Once everyone was clumped together, we
then had to smile and shuffle foreword as a group. We ended up doing this quite
a few times, and I was always the first in the group to walk. After that, we
used a previous warm-up exercise as improv material (as a group, as a way of locomotion
on the floor, and as a soloist in a circle) and then used that to come up with
four floor movements to do on repeat across the floor. These four movements
were then added onto the group-singing thing from before. After that, we did a
cool down, and we were done for today.
Overall, I had a pretty enjoyable day
(probably because everything we did was nothing like what I expected), and I
ended up learning some important things too (like I was holding my weight over
my heals while rolling up instead of evenly throughout my foot—it’s so nice to
have another good technique teacher).
Now let’s see how the rest of the week goes…
Ciao!
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