1 month Butoh Workshop & Performance Creation "The Blooming Empty Space"

Name: 1 month Butoh Workshop & Performance Creation "The Blooming Empty Space"
Start: 2024-07-29T09:00:00+02:00
Location: DOCK 11

Schedule

Mon Jul 29 2024 at 09:00 am

UTC+02:00

Location

DOCK 11 | Berlin, BE

1 month Butoh Workshop & Performance Creation
"The Blooming Empty Space"
by Motoya Kondo

One day can be the intensity of one month,
One week can be the intensity of one year,
One month can be the intensity of one life...
Exploring the reality of body-mind,
Reconnecting with the vast space within,
Allowing innate richness to flow,
Transforming personal experience into universal poems
Beyond dance, towards the evolution of existence

- Dates: 29th July - 23rd August 2024, Mon.-Fri. 9:00 -15:00
+ 24th & 25th August final performance.
- Venue: Dock 11 (Kastanienallee 79, 10435 Berlin)
- Fee: 1080euro / 980euro if registered before 30th June / 930euro if registered before 31st May
(In case of participating the first 2 weeks: 600euro / 550euro if registered before 30th June)
- For 1month full participation is limited to 15 participants
- Reservation & Info: [email protected]
- Description:
“Vast empty space and innumerable splendour qualities”
When we encounter masterpiece ink-painting, traditional Japanese theatre Noh, Haiku poetry, Ikebana flower arrangement, butoh, and so on, not only the objects, shapes, or dancers attract us but the vast sense of empty space. At the same time, there is vibrance in such empty space and innumerable different splendour qualities manifest lively. This is not only about local Japanese culture, but rather revealing of the universal reality of existence through art.
Our everyday life passes, eating, working, or dancing, within a limited cage, burying enormously rich nature within each of us. Education, traditions, or even learning dance could mould various forms of cages. But as we observe forests carefully under the sky, so many varieties of forms and qualities of plants, flowers, stones, winds… astonish us. This workshop is an invitation to explore and encounter the sky and the forest within our body-mind, discovering unlimited movements and textures within us, and transforming the personal journey into a universal poem.
There will be also talking and video screening of the fieldwork researches on traditional and ritual dances of Bali, south India, Tibet, and Japan, as well as butoh works.
* The workshop is addressed to both professional artists from any discipline as well as non professionals without any experiences, whoever is interested in the principles of body-mind-space that lies behind any kind of creations.

First two weeks: Basic trainings
Last two weeks: Creation of solo performances

Content:
① Whitening (Returning to a neutral body-mind, Preparing body to be an objective object)
- Body-scanning
- Space-expansion
- Union of stillness of space and movements
- Deconstructing the concept of time
② Basic movement principles
- Standing
- Walking
- Twisting
- Standing up and sinking down
- Creation of body parts (hands & arms, torso, feet & legs, face)
- Exploring external anatomy and movement principles
- Exploring contemplative anatomy and movement principles
- Connecting breath and movement
③ Metamorphosis (Discovering the unlimited diversity of qualities of the body-mind)
- Embodying textures of materials
- Embodying sounds
- Embodying images (paintings, video arts, natural elements)
④ Creating a performance (Discovering how to transform personal journey into universal poem on the stage)
- Inner process of building a performances
- Relationship with music, objects, and costumes
- Coming into the space, disappearing from the space
- Trajectory in the space
- Structured improvisation

About Motoya Kondo:
Born in Nagoya Japan, choreographer, dancer, and co-founder of Motimaru Dance Company. From 2005 he had been studying butoh with Yoshito Ohno, son of Kazuo Ohno and worked as his assistant. After 2010 he has started field work researches of local and traditional dances in Japan, India, Nepal, Spain, and Bali, studied Balinese dance with Agun Anom Putra, I Made Djimat, and Ida Bagus Oka Wirjana, in search of universal principle of movements and dance. Since 2008, he has been immersed in the practice and study of Eastern contemplative traditions, particularly following the Tibetan traditions, and bridging between contemporary art practices and the age old wisdom. He has been performing and teaching in: Venezia Biennale 2010, 9th International Choreography Competition "No Ballet”, International Dance Festival Lucky Trimmer 2016, Hildesheim University, Leipzig University, Academy of Media Arts Cologne, etc., Europe, Asia, Australia in over 40 cities.
(www.motoyakondo.com)
Photo: Claude Hofer