cool. thanks. i was thinking about taking one of the temescal art ctr. ones. i'd love to see a performance too. looks like there's some coming this fall. thanks for your email.

I hope to catch Diego Pinon's workshop in LA next weekend.

thank you. i just got home from seeing my 1st butoh performance, ame to ame. i'll be tryin' a butoh class soon! :)

> Butoh is poorly understood by Westerners... and perhaps
> inaccessible in its' purest sense. Japanese are wildly
> curious people and so are fascinating imitators. I believe
> Butoh is one thing truly Japanese

Having attended a talk with Min Tanaka after a performance, he specifically said that while Butoh originates historically in Japan, that it can be authentically performed by non-Japanese. Certainly, I am not saying that one cannot have legitimate disagreement with Min Tanaka-- his understanding of Butoh as "eternal revolution" (as the translator interpreted it) is not the only one, but it is an understanding held by one of the leading artists in the field.

Inward looking is not unique to any civilization, that it those of us in performing arts are seeking inner knowledge through Butoh might just be a product of our age-- in the 1970s many artists were using mime techique and training with the same aim towards self enlightenment, with American mime looking very different form French or Italian mime.

I recently attended a Kathak workshop with Chitresh Das who has been developing his pedagogy in terms of Kathak Yoga. It's not unprecedented or unusual that as artists, we use the techniques, repetoire, or exercises as means to explore ourselves. Butoh, included.

Where ever we go, there we are.

Divine Eye & others here,

I became interested in Butoh in the late 90's when a friend performed Butoh with a noise DJ. Not long after that I found a fascinating online article by the Swedish surrealist Johannes Bergmark, entitled 'Revolt of the Flesh and a Surrealist Way to Move'. A friend and I began experimenting with different qualities and degrees of motion while also doing improvized music, sound-poem tonings, and other sonic/tactile unfetterings. We did some of this in public, though it would be more accurate to call it butoh-influenced free improvisation.
On the personal level, when I do butoh and butoh oriented practices, it involves first of all a stillness, a quiet, inward expansion that allows what is within to come out. I discover my latent desires, play out interior conflicts or feelings of being in opposition, or harmony, with the world around me. I allow my body and face to be moved, danced, by currents that are unfamiliar to normally conceived waking consciousness. Sometimes this is very slow--a 'becoming' of sorts-and other times I will burst into a frenzied, manic condition, especially in order to throw off social repressions, psychic blockages based on stuck memories, retinal impressions, fear, hesitation, etc.
I took some classes with John Johnson, a Portland OR teacher who is also into Diego Pinon and Bill T. Jones as well as south american shamanism. These were fascinating, fun, and groundbreaking. I was in a butoh event with three women in October 2002 at a Performance Works Northwest cabaret called 'Cabaret Boris and Natasha.'
I am still learning (casually) different aspects of butoh and butoh-influenced theory and practice, so I am humble in terms of my own experience. I'm glad this tribe is somewhat active.

Mems