Dancers In Italy 2012

I’m not really sure where to begin with this one. Butoh began with the arrival of Ko Murobushi who barely spoke any English, let alone any Italian or Portuguese. This proved to be the most challenging the language barrier has ever been, because the guest artists usually has someone who can translate for him/her. Also, Butoh is no style to be taken lightly. Some call it the “dance of the organs” if that can even begin to give you any description of what it was like. Butoh is based on the idea of grotesque images, and involves a lot of extreme ideas as well as taboo topics. Most traditional Butoh dancers are painted entirely in white and move in ultra slow movement. (And when I say ultra slow, I mean you would probably think that if I made any sudden movements I would explode or something). So this was going to be a challenging week.

Since we didn’t have that much time with Ko, we had to get started on our performance as soon as possible. Our open doors was only a few days away and we had no idea what we were doing. We split up into different groups and began to work out a structure to perform. We were given no rules or regulations. After some time, we all presented something. And after sometime of presenting, we found out what we did was not good. It we all tried to fit too many ideas into our performances. So we tried to cut down. It was really difficult, because we already felt as though our structures were very minimalistic.

The entire workshop was very frustrating for the entire company, because no one knew what they were doing. No one knew what the goals were, what we were trying to learn, and it began to get to each one of us. However, the key to moving past this was to let go of the preempted ideas and expectations we had and to just go with it. This made it so much easier because it opened up our minds to the idea of almost doing nothing during the performance. This was the best Open Doors we’ve experienced yet. We’re still not sure why, but the energy and the spirit of the company was amazing. I felt like we gave very honest performances, one where we finally felt like a collective whole.

So here’s the lesson my friends:

Stop questioning, and GO WITH IT!

Lotsalove

-Miles

Hey Everyone,

A lot has been going on since my last post. I am personally dealing with a torn meniscus, but fortunately am able to dance in our Fighting Monkey workshop that we have been doing the past two weeks.

Going into Fighting Monkey, I was expecting to come home bruised and destroyed every night.. or even worse not even be able to participate because of my injury. However, Jozef Frucek and Linda Kapetanea helped us to explore first and foremost our humanity above anything else.

Instead of starting each day thinking of “dancing” on stage, Josef would tell us to simply walk and always be mobile throughout our whole body. Most of the work would be in partners; we would grab our partners wrists or hold different sides of a stick to interconnect and as one person would manipulate the other would be affected starting at the wrists and going into the elbows, shoulders, head, spine, legs, and then to the feet.

The afternoons were dedicated to a set choreographed structure of “fighting monkey.” What I thought would be  a series of trying to escape kicks and hits, was a set structure that worked WITH your partner and not AGAINST. We also learned how to react with any manipulations that were put on us, instead of going against them we would go with the force of each manipulation. Doing that keeps us away from harm, as well as teach us awareness of our surroundings and our own bodies.

We’d end our days doing some actual hand labor and I have the blisters to prove it! We took a block of wood and axed it into a circle… or as close to a circle as we possibly could. That sort of labor was completely inspiring to us all as we discovered that we weren’t just chopping wood to make a shape, but creating. All of what we did with our spheres was directly related in how we approach dance. In every human action that we do in life, as well as the 5 social forces (being culture, society, technology, economy, and politics) are what influence our dancing.

I am extremely excited to perform all that we have learned from Josef and Linda and am grateful for all they have shared with us.

Ciao!

Arianna

It really makes us happy!

[One of our names]
℅ Arsenale Della Danza
La Biennale di Venezia
Campo Della Tana
Castello 2169/F
30122 Venezia, Italy

Hey folks,

To add to Miles’ post from yesterday, I captured some photos of our physical therapist hard at work to keep us healthy, strong, and as injury free as we can be.

Preparing for what us dancers have in store for him. Photo Credit: Malcolm Freitas

Fabrizio investigating the Bollywood aches and pains on Richard

always very informative to his patients

My knee after after a Fabrizio appointment

Thanks Fabrizio!