Università Roma Tre

A dance methodology
Body practices and performing techniques in new research currents:
Butoh dance, Eurhythmicsof Steiner


The creative process that we want to share is open to all professional and non-professional students who want to approach the scene by the principles of the latest research on bodily reality: Butoh dance, from its origins in Japan to the inevitable influence with Western practices and Eurhythmics of Steiner in its intersection with the sensitivity of Eastern thought. The work will move around two important nucleus: training and authorial dance. For the first phase, which involves building and refining body awareness, it is essential to activate a perceptive listening of physical and spiritual resources starting from the basic units of the Training: exercises are real thermometers of the energy temperature of the human being.The Training, traditionally oriented towards a functional movement, will change nature and will be considered in itself a preferential way to access the dimension of dance. You will gradually enter into action through breathing practices, which attempt to bring attention back to an essential condition for the human being and for creation in itself: rooting in the body in order to be able to inhabit it in all its transformations and projections.The breath of life, as indicated in Eastern cultures, if sensibly directed in order to listen the individual parts of the body, can recover innate perceptive and sensorial intelligences and concretely awaken the articulating places of the muscular and skeletal structure.Taking care of posture is good for energy circulation and it is closely linked to a physiological harmony and an ontological richness, important elements to develop an artistic DNA. It is indispensable to come back to the conditions of waiting, to be able to pause within the body, to bring out the creativity of the human being,touching the uniqueness of his own nature. From this first subtle and delicate approach, we will move on to an increasingly macroscopic dimension of action.Some definite dance exercises, belonging to AnkokuButo, will be introduced: Samurai, Samurai in the clearing, Needles, Boxes, Seiza, The madness of the exact center ... other ones, inherent to natural phenomena: The movement of the clouds , Rainbow, Like flowing water, Animals ... different walkings and body states, swell as grammatical units, which train not only the elasticity, strength and stability of the body, but at the same time stimulate an original alliance between matter and energy, a seal necessary to enter, sustain and to rebirth the human presence in the given condition.The body volume, the three-dimensionality of the internal space, will be related to the amplitude of the surrounding space, both individually and chorally, with instruments taken from Eurhythmics: the Ephesus Technique and Forms. The Ephesus technique consists in extrapolating the energy of the voice during the emission of the basic elements of the language: vowels and consonants.These are captured in their sound and non-sound aspect. The silent emission of the word creates a physical space. Equally the non-action is the silence of the action. The Ephesus Statemake people acquire the sensitivity of important internal organic mechanisms and their echo. The introduction of ancient vocal and consonant mantras will more objectively restore the deep influence of the action of the voice on body structure.The contact with the blurred perceptive reality between visible and invisible, internal and external is a fundamental assumption of holistic knowledge and artistic awareness of the body. As far as the forms of eurhythmicsare concerned, these are projections into space of certain geometries present in Nature, in the Cosmos and in the Human too. One of the simplest examples: the Star, the Esse, the Spiral, round volumes, angular ones, curves ... Each participant is invited to follow the Forms, to explore their directions, to receive them as dimensions, spatial phenomena, in order to move and also to be moved by them for a mysterious alchemy of action. Space as a structure to follow thanks to the Forms and space as magma to be imagined in Defined Dance Exercises. To reach the level of an authorial dance a particular thrust is given in deepening the methodology by images. The intent is to explore in avery personal way the resources and artistic visions of each participant: the Nikutaiin the poetics of the Japanese Buto, that is the inner landscape or the Objective image in Eurhythmics. The first step will be in relating to certain concrete words and poetic verses specifically chosen and subsequently to meet the suggestion and the elusiveness of the Haiku, short compositions, vertices of Japanese poetic culture. Through Haiku the dynamic with Time and Space loses its usual boundaries to find further layers and springs, their distant echo and root, as if they were blown out of a remote place in human being.The dramaturgy of the body is enriched. Starting to compare the dancer or performer as well as an insect to rediscover his immediate quality of reaction in the space, in the same way orin a more enigmatic one Haiku subvert the reading codes of the real, to make us grasp more spontaneously its invisible, dual, multiple aspect. We have to catch the "back", the shadow of things with greater confidence and intuition. The workshop will include an open day during which other teachers, students, anyone interested is invited to come.

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" edited by Samantha Marenzi, Editoria e Spettacolo, Roma 2010.