Celebrate: Butoh Dance 50th Anniversary
Butoh Dance Workshops
Introduction to Butoh with Hiroko Tamano
Monday nights 8:15–10pm ongoing class
Butoh Experience curated by Christina Braun
Saturdays 1–3pm ongoing class
$10 cash donation only
There will be no class on October 10.
Workshop with Shinichi Iova-Koga and Yuko Kaseki
Saturday, October 3rd 11am–4pm $65
Email subterraneanarthouse at gmail dot com to register.
This workshop provides awareness practice to hone internal sensibilities and physical expression. We work with physical risk, image, bodies in motion and stillness to redraw the body map.
Basic training:
Noguchi gymnastics (water element) develops the relaxed, sensitive but dynamic body. Find the center of the body through the connection of earth to sky.
Butoh Dance (Hijikata influence) exercises as interpreted by Shinichi and Yuko.
Your body is the cabinet with many drawers. Taste your memory of body sensation and find new drawers.
Shinichi Momo Iova-Koga, originally a photographer, filmmaker and theater director, entered the world of Butoh dance in 1991 (initially through Akeno Ashikawa and then consistently through Hiroko Tamano and Yumiko Yoshioka). Childhood training in Judo (under Yuzo Koga) and early adult years studying Tadashi Suzuki Method of Acting (under Yukihiro Goto) influenced his expressions. Improvisational theater methods such as Action Theater (under Ruth Zaporah) shaped his approach to the process of creating stage works. In 1998, he founded the performance company inkBoat, whose productions reference Butoh dance as well as Physical Theater and filmic conventions. Shinichi examines, dissects and intentionally blurs the line between various media to uproot and communicate stories contained within the body. He and his wife Dana Iova-Koga founded inkGround, a studio in rural Northern California, to continue the exploration of stories through the land, utilizing the surrounding forests, rivers and ocean-side as new media for the life/dance investigation.
Yuko Kaseki studied Butoh and the Performing Arts in HBK Braunschweig with Anzu Furukawa, and danced in her company, Dance Butter Tokio and Verwandlungsamt from 1989 to 2000. She and Marc Ates founded cokaseki in 1995. Their dance works are based on Butoh, western contemporary dance and performance techniques to create precise, dreamlike dance theater. She has collaborated with a variety of musicians (Axel Doerner, Aki Takase, Antonis Anissegos, Andrea Neumann, Johannes Wallmann, and others), and visual artists (Chiharu Shiota, Francois Giovangigli, Soren Do and others). Her solo works have been performed throughout Europe, Japan and the USA. In 2001, she began collaborating with inkBoat (San Francisco), creating choreographed and improvised works. Since 2004, she has organized and performed in the Improvisational Series: "Ammo-Nite Gig," with musicians, dancers and performers from Japan, USA and Europe.
Petra Kuppers and Neil Marcus lead the Butoh Experience
Saturday, October 17 1–3pm
Donation at the door.
Art Installation all day. Class 1–3pm. Performance 7pm
Join us to work with bodily images of cell touch, penetration and ghosting. The class will be part of the preparation for the evening's Burning score You can participate in the class without the evening performance, and vice versa. (Performance installation description on the Home Page)
Petra Kuppers and Neil Marcus are part of The Olimpias, www.olimpias.org. Petra Kuppers is a community dance artist and performance maker who employs ritual and participatory aesthetics in her work. Neil Marcus is a contact improvisational lover, poet and dancer of the world. They are part of the Bare Bones Butoh community, and have worked with Butoh artists internationally.
Butoh Neshamah — Dance of the Soul
with Shakina Nayfack
Sunday, October 18 11am–1pm
$15 at the door
Interested in dance, meditation, a good workout? Why not try all three at once? Come discover a new level of authenticity in your creative work, and a new depth of understanding toward your physical, emotional, and expressive body.
Shakina Nayfack is a theatre director and third-generation Butoh artist, trained beneath the founder of Butoh Ritual Mexicano, Diego Piñón. His approach integrates traditional Butoh exercises with new, inter-cultural explorations in mysticism, guided improvisation, and active meditation.
Studio 210, 3435 Cesar Chavez St
San Francisco, CA 94110 map
24th St Bart, Muni bus 14 or 26
Buffoons Dance Butoh
Workshop
Tuesday, October 27 12–3pm
Wednesday, October 28 11–2pm
Thursday, October 29 11–2pm
Friday, October 30 10–1pm
Performance
Friday, October 30 1–2pm
$130 for all 4 days of workshops and the performance opportunity
Buffoons Dance Butoh is a 13 hour interdisciplinary ensemble performance workshop which combines the disciplines of butoh dance with bouffon, a troupe of low clowns. Through a series of exercises, games and structured improvisations, participants learn concepts, movementsequences, skills, generate material and establish new communication abilities. Previous experience is good, but not necessary. A willingness to play and a desire to perform are important. The workshop will conclude with a lunch-time ensemble performance on Friday, Oct 30.
Txi Whizz has been a professional stage clown for 35 years. Txi, pronounced "chee", lives in Vancouver, B.C., Canada. For the past 23 years she has co-directed Winnarainbow for Adults, a performing arts camp, with Wavy Gravy in California. She has studied, practiced and performed butoh dance for 15 years with Koichi and Hiroko Tamano of Harupin-Ha Butoh Dance and with Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi of Kokoro Dance. Txi is fascinated with the space where buffoons dance butoh.
Observation and Mythology
Choreography workshop and student performance opportunity with Katsura Kan
Workshop
Tuesday Nov. 3, Wednesday Nov. 4 and
Thursday Nov. 5 7:00–10:00pm
Sunday Nov. 8 12–3pm
Student Showing
Sunday November 8 7pm
$150 for 12 hours plus performance opportunity.
$140 if registered by October 16th.
We wake up in the unknown Forest and end up in the unknown Ocean. Some of us are lucky becausewefind the White Elephant which is calling all the time.Then, we realize that we can name these Unknown things whatever we want. We are talking about the origin of Butoh.
Butoh has a fundamental question of what Choreography means. Kan's choreography workshop has an aim to become a part of the audience's dream. We need to let our body speak instead of our brains, as body is 1,000 times richer and purely honest. Flesh is equal to spirit, transforming every second, carrying the history (time) and aural region (space) from knowing and unknowing. We start to OBSERVE and LISTEN to each other through our individual Mythology.
Choreography is music with the key notations from your own creation story. I try to guide you.
Limited to 9 participants.
Email us to register and for more information.
Please make checks out to Butoh San francisco and mail them to:
PO Box 77664, San Francisco, CA 94107
All classes and workshops except Butoh Neshamah held at:
subterranean arthouse
2179 Bancroft Way, Berkeley, CA 94704
between Shattuck and Fulton map
Hiroko Tamano
Shinichi Iova-Koga & Yuko Kaseki Photo by Lucas Fester
Katsura Kan Photo by Doug Slater
Txi Whizz & the Baffoons Photo by Frankie Kerr
Neil Marcus
Christina Braun Photo by Liz Payne