Butoh Mutations
Dance, non-duality, and Butoh in London with Dominique Savitri Bonarjee
10 week course
IN PERSON: TUESDAYS, 19:30-21:15
RETURNS JANUARY 24th 2023
Top Studio @ Colet House
To vanish our humanity, to become unconsciousness
Butoh dancer Natsu Nakajima once told me:
“The most difficult thing to teach …is how to ‘be’, how to vanish humanity, social humanity. In Western dance, the dancers are already human beings… in our traditional Japanese dance, it is important to be unconsciousness, or the material body, the neutral body… This is the most difficult part to teach: ‘how to vanish humanity’.”
In this 10-week course we will learn to ‘vanish humanity and become unconsciousness’ through an ecopoetic dance notation. The body becomes a laboratory for the alchemical exploration of body material – its pliancy, metastability, hardness, lightness, breath, etc. These properties form the subject matter of a sensorial poetics that will prompt and guide improvisational work towards each developing solo pieces. This poetic approach is inspired by Butoh-fu choreography developed by butoh founder, Tatsumi Hijikata in the 1970s. We will cover the history of Butoh-fu and you will learn to write your own choreographic texts, which will form the basis of the performance event. On the final day of the course, Colet House will host a performance, open to an invited audience.
Each class begins with a warm-up adapted to the material to be covered in the session. From there we work on dance explorations and improvisations in solos, duets and as a group, including experimental vocalization/chant. As this is a dance class, there is physical contact involved. If you are not comfortable with this, please inform us in advance.
Attendance at all classes is advised to prepare for the final performance. Drop-in attendance is also possible, though if you wish to participate in the performance, you will need to attend at least 7 classes including the two last classes (14th and 21st March).
£ 130 for the whole series paid in advance, drop-ins £ 20/class (students/members £ 120 for the whole series or £ 15/class)
Dominique Savitri Bonarjee
Between 2012-2015 Dominique lived in Japan pursuing an oral-research project into Japanese Butoh dance. There she interviewed seminal dancers for her upcoming book to be published in 2023. Her principal teachers and mentors are the dancers Masaki Iwana, Ko Murobushi, Natsu Nakajima and Yoshito Ohno.
Dominique is a lifelong seeker in the path of nondual wisdom practices and her classes will often leak into spiritual matters. She is a yogi since childhood, a Sufi dervish in the making, and a qualified practitioner of Tai-ch’i and Qi-Gong in the Wudang lineage.
@dominique_savitri
