Bones and Moments

(image: Fall Equinox Butoh Exploration, 2007)

It's been awhile since I last posted to this blog... much has happened, most of all that I finally found an overall structure and "arc" to this performance. It's been an intense process... the timing of the Naked Stages program has worked out well, as far as pushing me to work and re-work elements of the show, and to stage 2 complete run-throughs of the piece for an audience. Thanks to those who attended the September 17 pre-show and offered feedback.

The Survival Pages, in this rendition, is very video-oriented. In some ways I think I'm still hesitant about my own abilities as a live performer, and so I've leaned heavier on elements that have been pre-worked and don't depend on my "on"-ness in the moment of presentation. And yet this is a live performance, so....

One of the more challenging elements has been building my confidence as a moving performer, & a dancer. I presented a short 10 -minute dance at the 9x22 Dance Cabaret at Bryant Lake Bowl on Sept. 26... a wonderful venue for showing works-in-progress, and getting valuable feedback from the audience in a structured conversation following the presentation. I'd love to integrate more of my Butoh training into the show, and work up the bravery to attempt this kind of movement onstage.

Digging through my notes from my first Butoh trainings in Yamanashi, Japan, at Min Tanaka's BodyWeather Farm, I rediscovered this succinct definition of Butoh from an interview we had with Nario Goda, a dance reviewer in Japan with particular interest in this form:

Q: What is the main different between Butoh and other forms of dance?
A: "Butoh strives to find the body first, then allow the dance to arise.
Other dance has a form, and tries to make the body fit into it.
Butoh strives to know the body in its own way. You learn to know the details-- when you are sick you know all the small changes in your body. Butoh uses all the details of the body, catching every information as material for dance, for inspiration."

Reaching this level of body-awareness-- let alone "allowing the dance to arise" from it, makes Butoh very difficult to perform. Butoh can certainly be spectacular, and is often imitated by performers who paint themselves white, move slowly, and make strange facial expressions. Yet I often find a quality of concentration that's missing. Other performances I've seen, there's a certain magic that can happen-- I can sense the energy in the room shift-- in witnessing Butoh. There's almost something otherworldly or shamanic about it... The dancer, through their complete focus and absorbed captivation in whatever their body is experiencing, draws me in. As a performer, this level of concentration is what I strive for-- and what is the toughest: any glimpse of self-consciousness, a shift of the eyes, a glimmer of thought about "should" passing through my mind, becomes evident in my body, breaking the energy and throwing off the spell.

A reason many Butoh performers paint their faces and bodies white is similar to having a white canvas-- a blank surface which can become anything. In Butoh, the concept of "self" is secondary. Once I'm not "me", I am free to become a leaf, a bone, a breath. Most important is to believe in what you have become-- I am not showing you, like a mime. I am not self-conscious of the ways that my body is interpreting itself as a leaf or bone or breath. This part is also tough. It's hard to let go so completely, to accept whatever my body does, and present myself with such detachment and acceptance. I find that it helps me detach when I'm painted white, or am somehow less "me" when I dance.

A reason Butoh is often slow is to allow intense concentration it takes... to arrive in that state of mind-body fluidity, and keep it connected. If you lose concentration, just keep still until you find it again. Butoh is a strange merging of the senses with unconscious impulse, channeled through muscle and a body loose enough to really respond to the environment or imagination.


The series of outdoor Butoh explorations I've done throughout the seasons has been grounding and informative. I've been doing these explorations every Solstice/Equinox and in-between seasonal markers, since February. Some of the footage from these will be in the show-- most has been kept as research or inspiration for the piece. I find it much easier to enter into "Butoh-mind" when I'm alone, and when I am in an environment which speaks to me. Often, magic happens.

Most recently, for the Fall Equinox, I brought a deer skull to the edge of the Minnesota River, at the Bloomington Ferry Wildlife Preserve. I usually decide what I'm going to bring, or where I'm going to go, on the day that I set aside to go out and "do Butoh"... That particular day, the skull seemed to be looking at me, so I brought it with. A set of paper-mache antlers I'd made for a MayDay Parade years ago, and a dress with fall colors also came along. When I arrive in a place, I walk through the area until I find a spot that seems to call to me. I'll set up my camera, and depending on what I see, place myself in the frame, and dance/move/react according to what I find and feel.

It was twillight when I set up the video camera in the marshy bottoms of the fall forest. A suburban couple had crossed me on the path on my way to this place, and the man noticed the skull and antlered headdress I was carrying and joked, "Are you going to call the deer?" I suppose I looked like some kind of scary witch-person on my way to conduct a ceremony. (Perhaps I was...)

Alone, I had barely started my dance when across the marsh I heard a strange sneeze. I looked up to see the white flag of a tail bound forward, then lower down as she held still. A doe was watching me through the trees. I was wearing the antlers, moving strangely for a human, and I think she was (rightly) very confused about what she was seeing. I had painted my face to echo the contours of a deer's face. In my hands were two long sticks, which I used as forelegs. I continued to move, and, watching her, absorbed the careful watchfulness, the curiousity, the grace and quietness with which she moved through the trees. For a moment, I was in an interesting place between human and not-human. I felt that we were simply two beings encountering one another, observing each other, sharing this place & time.

It's the kind of feeling that I would love to bring into performance onstage, and perhaps a more advanced Butoh performer would be able to absorb this feeling to re-create it, even removed from this place, this moment. To do this in performance, in front of an audience, feels a little like throwing myself off a cliff and hoping I'll sprout wings. Will I really be able to concentrate? To be in the moment? Am I really in the moment if I'm attempting to invoke a feeling my body had in the past?
























Moments like these
I feel more human, more alive
more spirit, and less "self"

It feels good, to enter
into a place
and encounter it simply
as it is, and as I am

Here, I find
the magic in a place
will show its face...
Here, I find
the magic in me
will rise up to meet it.