First Rehearsal for "Takarazukushi"

Ima-san talks to saki-san and I for two hours about the meaning of Takarazukushi, and the various themes connected to it. She also has pictures of the theater and a calendar of rehearsal dates.

But the moment that strikes me now is when we are in the studio, and Ima-san asks me about my parents, and what my mom thought of Obake Yashiki.

Me: Ummm... she enjoyed it?
Ima: chuckle
Me: Maybe because she is American, but she didn't understand why people are nude.
Ima: I don't think anyone was nude during obake yashiki ...
Me: I showed her pictures, too.
Ima: Well, I don't think a lot of people understand that.

And then what she says next, poorly paraphased and translated by me, is that nudity is a removal of modern dress, nudity is a return to the primal, nudity is beauty...

Me: So, it is to forget the ages?
Ima: Not to forget, but to tap into the memory bank of the body.
Me: oh.

It makes me wonder what is in the memory bank of my body. White imperialists, coming to the new world, farming in South Carolina, and enslaving their brothers? Or even further back, English royalty, dining on whole pigs, beheading traitors, and laughing at the commoners who cannot afford a loaf of bread? Every time I have heard of a native american on my mom's side of the family, or possibly a black woman on my dad's side, I clutch to the idea that maybe I have roots for how I have felt my whole life. Being born into advantage does not make one a bad person, but I have never felt like the dominant, the majority. Maybe I can take it even further, back to ancestors roaming Europe, fighting to stay warm and surviving on game and walking through the wilderness. And not that it is strict. Ima-san once said that the materials that make us up have been around since the beginning of time. Maybe I can remember it all?

WE TIGERS

My friend Elizabeth and I made a dance film! It features a wicked soundtrack, hot Hankyu train action, and the Kobe/Nishinomiya area. Please check it out:

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3319335926889173716&hl=en

Bridge Project Workshop

The Bridge Porject is a two-week series of dance workshops held at the Kyoto Art Center. Each workshop spanned three or four days and was categorized as training, technique, or creation. When I asked someone about the bridge project, he pointed to morikawa-san's picture and said "he is good." Also, since I was extremely impressed by his piece at the gala performance, I chose to take Morikawa Hirokazu's workshop, four two-hour workshops held from June 4th- 7th.

Morikawa studied mime and circus in France, and then he returned to Osaka and danced with Monochrome Circus for five years. Recently, at the beginning of his sixth year with MC, he quit in order to pursue creating work on his own.

The space in the art center was a large wood floor with no mirrors and windows. The dance floor is like a pit, as it is lower than the entrances and must be reached by walking down steps. Songs by Radiohead, mostly from their OK Computer Album, were coming from a stereo.

We started with isolations, concentrating on how to move around different parts of the vertebrae. As we traveled from the tips of our heads to our tailbones, we specificied one vertebrae and experimented with how to move the surrounding area. For example, how would one move the section above the bone while keeping the section below it still? Also, how would one separate just that vertebrae from the rest of the body?

When we finished stretching, we were lying on our stomachs with our hands in front of our heads. From this position, Morikawa effortlessly pushed his hands into the floor, scooped his feet underneath his pelvis, and stood. He moved seamlessly from lying face down to standing upright. Afterwards, he gaves us a slightly teasing nod and then reversed the motion, back to the lying position. This meant that we were now supposed to try. We struggled, and clunkily heaved our bodies into standing and back to the floor again.

Morikawa can efficiently move his body in a way that makes the movement smooth, seamless, and organic, with no show of the effort. He remarked in class that he could not dance prettily, but his movement is the most elegant and sinuous that I have seen for quite some time.

The challenges continued. Can we roll across the floor seamlessly, as one piece, all body parts moving at same speed in unison? Could we insert a push-up into this roll, so that the body dips up and back down again as we roll? Could we crawl smoothly, with all body parts at one, steady speed?

After spending all of this time on the floor, he initiated an exercise from the standing position. He ushered us to a dry erase-board, where he drew a picture of a metaphorical pelvis (see graphic on the right). It is a sprinkler that shoots water our of each of the circular nozzles. He asked us to think about moving in each of the directions indicated- front, back, one side, other side, up and down. What would it be like to follow each direction in a committed way? Moving upward is kind of impossible, beyond standing up with a elongated spine. To explore that direction, he asked us to pretend that there is a bee on our nose, which then flies away quickly. We followed the bees, initiating from our noses, as they flew up into the air and changed directions quickly.

He demonstrated that, when we walk, the pelvis moves kind of like a horse's gallop or an ocean wave. How could our walk have more ... commitment? More of a push forward, instead of a sloshing in the air. Something smoother, more seamless ... the two words that I use the most in describing his movement.

We took a water break and finished class with an amazing floor combination. Weight shifted from our entire bodies touching the floor, to our pelvis being lifted over our hands, to following the imaginary bee.

Morikawa talked to me a little afterwards, in a very relaxed way. I asked him about himself, and he told me, in the middle of which he remarked "eh, you pretty much understand what i am saying, don't you?" Sometimes class was difficult, because it was taught in Japanese. So, I probably have confused some of the verbal meanings. However, the body meanings were very clear, very inpsiring. The next few classes of the workshop were also amazing, adding variations to the material above, like using different points of to body for initiation in counterbalance, moving the spine like a chain, and so forth.

Morikawa's next performance is a collaboration with a film artist at the Shiga Performance Center for Creating of Art for Citizens on Sunday July 1st at 4:00 pm. The admission is free! For more details, visit www.shiga-bunshin.or.jp.

Gala Performance and Talk Session

Selenographica, Monochrome Circus, Morikawa-san, and j.a.m. dance theatre each performed a piece in a Gala performance at Kyoto Art Center, in order to kick off the Bridge Dance Project workshops.

The four pieces were all duets between a male and female dancer. Oddly, all of the pieces seemed to crescendo (or have a suspenseful/gasp sort of moment) when the two performers confronted each other directly in an embrace or stood closely and face-to-face. All of the pieces were interesting explorations of movement and sound, but the piece that grabbed the audience the most was Morikawa's "A room with chairs." The two performers had such connected energy that it was amazing. Their relationship felt very alive and real and interesting. During the talk session, Morikawa-san said that he created the piece through exploring interesting movement and interest in the body, rather than exploring a certain concept. Yet, through tight movement and relationship between the two performers, Morikawa-san's piece was the most conceptually coherent and striking, it seemed. Just not in a way that i can express in words at the moment.

It was a good feeling to see these four choreographers and be impressed by each one of them, because the last three (Morikawa, j.a.m., and Monochrome Circus) seem to be holding workshops and performances quite regulary in Kyoto and the Kansai area.

Contact Improvisation Workshop

"Hot Summer in Kyoto" concluded with a weekend-long Intermediate-level contact improvisation workshop that ended with a dance jam. The teacher was Ingo Rosencratz (pictured on the left), from Germany, and the students were about 1o dancers from the local area (although one had to travel by shinkansen, i think), one visiting from Canada, and Cara and me. The mix was mostly women with anywhere from two to four men at different times. The workshop was held in a black box theatre in the Osaka Municipal Arts Center.

The first day, Saturday, we focused on having a solid, physical connection with our partners, and the various movement and lifts that can use that connection. We began by rolling across the floor using our centers (the muscles just under your belly button) with our partner's guidance. Then, various games of leading each other by the hand. A particularly interesting exercise was when one placed their hand on their partner's shoulder, closed their eyes, and followed their partner. The partner would walk, run, crawl, and jump while the partner followed blindly, with only a dim sense of light change and invisible objects moving around them. Next, we learned different ways of walking while connected with our partner and lifting our partner onto our backs, sides, shoulders, and etc. We ended with free dancing.

The second day, Sunday, took a creative turn- today was more about finding one's own movement quality (the internal), being inspired to create by external stimuli, and doing all of this while moving in and out of contact with other people. This day was amazing. We played in solo, duet, trio, and quartet like autistic children romping around in a playground. However, it was important to maintain the our own qualities and stay committed to curiousities as well as feel, support, and draw inspiration from our partners. The day ended with a two-hour free dance jam.

One interesting exercise was standing across the room from your partner, and facing him. Ingo instructs us to take in this human being in front of us. Next, you and your partner walk toward each other, and stop at the distance that feels appropriate. If one person gets to close, the other can back away. And both parties can play with speed, how this space is maintained. My partner was a roughly 35 to 40-yr-old man in glasses. When we began, I could see his eyes tense, and his body question how much to walk towards me. As the exercise continued, my face relaxed, and I could see his face do the same. As we tested the distance that was comfortable between us (about a meter?) his face became ten years younger. We had some good dances after this.

There were two familiar faces - two j.a.m. dance theatre company members. Also, there were at least three people from the contemporary dance company Monochrome Circus, which also runs the "Hot Summer in Kyoto" workshop. Butoh dancers, contemporary dancers, and people interested in free movement all attended. During a water break, an interesting point of conversation was that one man in the workshop cut down trees as a living, while another man made wooden furniture in a small shop in kyoto.

Contact Improvisation is relatively new for me, since I have been doing it for little under a year, and I was rather nervous at times. Because of this, I was very caught up in myself and not paying the best attention to those around me. I considered talking to Ingo afterwards, asking him about contact dance in relation to Japan, and his experience in teaching workshops in Japan... and somehow the very idea of it seemed racist. There was nothing particulary different about the workshop because it was held in Japan or taken by many Japanese people, except for maybe the fact that there were only 14 or so students. It was a dance workshop with other people, with energies and feelings and qualities. And they are each different, with experience travelling and living in other places, a sensitivity to art and movement, and a different career/life path.

The main players of Monochrome Circus are Yuko Mori and Kosei Sakamoto (pictured on right), and they were also two of the students in the workshop. Founded in 1990, this contemporary dance company focuses on communication, contact improvisation, and stage work that "reflects urban Japanese life and society." I want to run away and join the Monochrome Circus.

Meditation

Joseph Campbell describes dance as a zen discipline, an art in which one has to have total concentration and yet have no-mind (no chattering, distracting thoughts). The act of dance shares many of the same characteristics of meditation. To explore this connection, I am comparing recent dance classes with Mark Epstein's book "Thoughts without a thinker."

In meditation, one wishes to achieve bare attention- an impartial, nonjudgemental perspective on the feelings and emotions that bubble into the mind. The meditator neither clings nor denies the emotions - they are allowed to arise, exist, and naturally fall away. The effects of the mind can be sublimated, transformed.

Transformed into what? I'm honestly not sure. For Shimazaki-sensei, feeling is transformed into movement. After all, "Feeling is Everywhere" is the quote printed on the dance majors' Team Shimazaki sweatshirts. When Shimazaki walked into class on Monday, he seemed more brusque than usual, as if some frustration floated in the back of his mind. No jokes, only a few short comments. It was like a summer day, hot and uncomfortable. We completed barre exercises, and then the center floor combination was completely different than the usual feeling. The movements were beautiful in a mournful way. The body whirled one way and then the other, and different shapes appear effortlessly with each turn. Our heads tumbled backwards and forwards with the movement, and our feet were sensual bodies, feeling our own legs and seeking new hiding spots. It was exhiliarating.

When it was time to set it to music, Shimazaki turned to the Hiraiyama, the pianist, and asked what he though the feeling of the music was. Shimazaki suggested that "Kizuitara" - before you know it - the leaves are falling from the trees and they start to dance like this. From this suggestion, Hiraiyama began playing. It was perfect.

Dance allows the dancers to pour out feeling, let it consume their whole body and move them like madmen. The feeling exists, has it's turn, and then the dance is over, and the dancer rests. The body is tired and awashed in feel-good chemicals, and the feeling has dissappeared along with the shapes the dancer imprinted in the air. Tranformation and dissipation- of the ego's feelings.

But ultimately in meditation, one wants to let go of ego. Feelings cannot be pushed away, but they are ultimately illusory bodies that contribute to strong senses of self and identity. In Butoh, there seems to be little room for personal, everyday feelings, as the dancer is connecting with forces greater than herself. For example, in time she will travel to the beginning of history through the matter in her body and throughout evolution with the memory of past movement patterns. While butoh dancing, one's roots reach deep within the earth, and one's shin, or consciousness, extends out and into the universe. In order to connect with these primal forces, one needs concentration and mindfulness, the two main components of meditation. Concentration is the ability to focus strictly onto one thing, and mindfulness then allows the meditator to be aware of what happens while she is in this focus.

At butoh class on Tuesday, the participants were Cara, Ima-san, and me. We were joyful, exploring the body and thinking about our connections to the universe. One exercise we do is to exhale and feel a big ball in front of our torso. Then our body shrinks and hardens into stone. A seed is in the stone, and a plant grows out of it. The plant is rooted in the earth, and we then must walk with this image. (Also, our veins are like roots, carrying nutrients and connecting the whole of our bodies). Ima-san says to walk like you have roots. The walk requires very slow half-steps, a careful and conscious move from one foot to the other. She described it as "Teinei," meaning polite, but also proper. This walking seems the same as the standard type of walking in butoh, called tsuruhashi walking. With legs slightly bent, it is a pattern of pick up foot slowly, move it slowly, place it in front of the other foot carefully. Repeat. The result is a seamless, intentful walk. Saturday, at Clear Sky Dharma Center in Kyoto, a teacher named Paul Jaffe demonstrated the meditative posture of walking. It was exactly the same method. "This will definitely make you a better butoh dancer," he told me.

On the other hand, Dance can be a method to achieve confluence in the realm of the gods, and to feel ones ego boundaries dissolving. It's a rapturous experience that can be addictive and possibly detour a would-be Buddha. With the proper understanding, dancing can open an entirely new world.

j.a.m. dance theatre workshop

As part of the company workshop series in the "Hot Summer in Kyoto," a 3-day class was given by j.a.m. dance theater. Led by Kinki University dance graduate Mayuko Aihara, j.a.m dance theatre is a contemporary dance company founded in Osaka in 2002.

I participated in the first two days of the class. It began with a basic contemporary warm up, maybe some relaxed plies and different series to get the body loose and moving. Then we did an across the floor section that used wide sashes, level changes, and whimsical turns. The center combination was from one of their pieces, and it was a syncopated, almost jazzy combination, that seemed to be investigating the relationship between the arms and legs.