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.