Università Roma Tre

Laboratory Proposal
The real body: the performative practices of Buto Blanc and of Ephesus Technique

The combined training and creation path, open to all interested students, combining professionals and non-professionals in search of new perceptual and performance modes in dance, aims to create basic body language among participants, using as a reference the method of White Dicker Masaki Iwana's work in a first part of the work and initiation at Euritmia through the Ephesus Technique of Master Akira Kasai in a second part. Every meeting will open with a time to devote to training. As requested and suggested by oriental cultures, exercise will not only be important for its mechanical function of mere warming but above all as a condition necessary to awaken important dance attitudes. Through certain exercises, you will gradually seek to gain elasticity and balance, to activate an intuitive intelligence of the body and a readiness and effectiveness in action. It will be important to educate the students to simple respiratory techniques that are able to make the bony and muscular structure softer and more accessible and free the joints of the joints, making them empty and receptive places, thus allowing a more organic passage of energy into action and a richer presence in space. The basic experience of living your body is a perception that is already nurtured in training. More specifically, the practice introduced by Buto Blanc in his orthodox lines takes the name of "The life of a plant" and identifies eight defined dance models that translate the body's organic mechanism in a poetic and indirect way, associating it with images taken from phenomenal mode of Nature. We will then approach bodily modes that will allow the realization of the old type, the type of woman, the samurai, the young, among the most used in human exploration and dance exercises related to the visualization of plant phenomena and animals such as bloom, drooling, fog, pollen, wind, and animal. As the well-trained in the research movement of Anku Buto and Steinerian Euritmia, the intent is to return and deepen the integrity of the human being with the macro and micro cosmos, to rebalance the physical and spiritual resources specific to each individual and make this fertile and creative ground an artistic humus, a springboard to try to advance in the field of performing arts. In this sense, the emphasis will be placed on the inner nature of the body, its natural and natural state, sensibilities and propedeutic instruments to interrogate about the material manifestation of the body, its internal dynamics, reflected by deep organic mechanisms. These bodily states will be investigated in their different quantitative and qualitative levels to approach a more personal dance, in the passages of a dance of inspiration before and of a free dance afterwards. With the Ephesian technique, voice work will be introduced, namely vocalization of vocals and language consonants, for a greater awareness of the dynamics between an interior and personal space and an external, choral and shared space. The vigor of vocalization from a subtle point of view will intercept the invisible and essential dimension of the generating energy of the creative act. They will explore structures of Steinerian Euritmia, which train to move organically into space in all directions and perceive it in all its volumes. Each participant will begin with more intuitive creative faculties, through the strategic use of images for dance. It is to offer words, phrases, poetic verses of Western and Oriental culture as a mysterious orientation, an enigmatic path to follow in discovering one's inner landscape. Surprising and effective in this sense the haiku's evocative and alogic force. These short poetic compositions considered the ultimate expression of zen culture are distinguished by the conciseness and fugacity of their images. The Haiku experience phenomenal reality beyond its visible aspect as a unity of spirit and matter; suggest an instantaneous and emotional perception of reality that is transmitted directly from the senses with which it is grasped to a more intimate understanding of it. To explore the performative possibilities, the quest to be made is spiritual, meaning for the spiritual that the man's tendency to reach the essence and the structure of his own interiority. The laboratory includes an open and final act as an opening to the public.

Alessandra Cristiani, "Masaki Iwana e la tradizione del Butō Bianco. Metodologia della danza" e "Un’ulteriore riflessione" in "Trasform’azioni - Rassegna internazionale di danza butō. Fotografia di un’esperienza" a cura di Samantha Marenzi, Editoria e Spettacolo, Roma 2010.