Saturday 28th January Of Butoh and Breaking Away

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Butoh

It is very rare that adult performers have the focus and the discipline to undertake long Butoh exercises.It requires an aspect of performance and physical skill that most don't have. Therefore, we made it clear to the students at WYA that this was an exercise that was very advanced. We asked them to go with it as much as they could.

So, what was the exercise?

It begins with a walk - a shaking off of the fact that the space is a working dance studio. We encourage the students to begin to think about their own walk, ignore everyone else. Then, with the aid of music, we begin to create a world. A world where every sense is alive. The walk slows, feet barely moving and eyes ahead. The walk slows even further and suddenly you feel a weight on your head. You are balancing. You are striving to hold this weight but it pushes you down. Slowly. You struggle against the weight but slowly, slowly, it pushes you into the floor. You fight against it but soon, soon you are down. Your entire body stretched out. And the world you know begins to evaporate. Your body becomes covered, you lie there, in the ash of centuries, the ice of ages.

A ray of light pierces the dark and hits one part of your body. That part begins to move, to come alive, to explore the light, the new surroundings and slowly, slowly, your body learns to move again. You stand, or do you. The air is air? You move through it, peaceful, floating, how do you move? What is around you? Alive. And then, you see yourself, you see your hair, you think about your breakfast and with a large step, step back into this world and you.

The whole exercise lasts about 30 minutes.

Now, all this sounds a little out there and intense!! But actually, it's just a simple imagination exercise and allows the performer to explore aspects of their senses, to focus fully on every small movement. It focuses the mind, allowing the performance to take over all of our worries and self-awareness.

We also make the point that this is performance. This isn't you, the actor, and it's very important to shake off that performance. As actors we are presenting a truth, we aren't becoming a character that stays with us. There are countless stories of actors coming off the rails because of the intensity of their involvement with a character. We embrace the fact that in the moment of performance, the character is fully there, but when we 'step out' of character, we are us again, you and me.

For young actors, this exercise gives them a wonderful opportunity to go to extraordinary places in their imagination. It teaches them that self-awareness and lack of confidence can be overcome. It also builds ensemble - everyone involved, everyone experiencing something together.

Here are a few quotes from the young actors after the exercise.

Even though it's a cupboard, you’re not seeing a cupboard.
I couldn’t see but I could hear everything.
It felt like there was no one else in the room. You weren’t looking.
There’s an object that you see but it’s not an object.
It could be a lake, where you go down down down – it covers you.
At first you feel awkward, but then when you see others, you feel that you can drift into it.
My eyes were dropping but I felt that I could still feel the ash.
A beam of light – a miner’s or architects torch.
Ice melting.
You could taste the ash.
Kind of like, losing a sense – it became about what you felt and what you heard.
It’s good to shake it all off afterwards.

And oh yeah, remember that these kids are aged between 7 and 12. All I can say is that I was totally inspired by them this week and I am every week. I guess I should get used to expecting more and more because they are pretty special.