|
Event
Embodying the Spirit: Intro to BUTOH dance with Dr. Joan Laage
EMBODYING THE SPIRITS: Introduction to Butoh dance with Dr. Joan Laage
Sunday, October 29th from 12pm--4:00pm || ATLAS Institute @ CU Boulder
-- Butoh is an avant-garde dance form born in Japan in the 1950s. This workshop draws from Joan's extensive training and apprenticeship with Butoh masters Yoko Ashikawa and Kazuo Ohno, and her background as a landscape gardener. Throughout the workshop, we will experience training methods towards a supple body and mind, and investigate aesthetics and somatic principles common to Butoh through creative explorations. Joan's teaching of Butoh is based on a process of erasing social postures, dissolving normative physical patterns and re-creating the dancing body through somatic exercises and guided improvisations largely inspired by ecology/nature imagery. Group and partner work will facilitate participants individual and collective journeys. The workshop structure includes explorations of the physical body, elemental body, and ethereal body. We will draw famous Japanese Ukiyoe woodblock prints to create movement sequences inspired by Joan's time studying and dancing with Butoh pioneer Yoko Ashikawa.
*** This workshop is FREE for CU students but an RSVP is REQUIRED to attend ***
--- $45 for NON-STUDENTS ---
Non-student community members can attend for a $45 registration fee paid via PayPal or Venmo.
SEND VENMO PAYMENT to @Ivan-Espinosa-19
ABOUT THE TEACHER:
Joan Laage, Ph.D., is a choreographer, Butoh performer and teacher who is regarded by many as the Grandmother of Butoh in the Pacific Northwest. While living in Japan for nearly a decade, Joan studied extensively with Butoh pioneer Yoko Ashikawa (the major disciple of Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata) and with world-renowned Butoh master Kazuo Ohno in Tokyo. Joan performed with Yoko Ashikawas legendary Butoh troupe, Gnome, throughout the 1980s and is one of the few non-Japanese dancers to have had the incredible opportunity to work with Ashikawa. In addition to over 35 years of teaching and thousands of performances over the years, Laage is responsible for bringing the art form of Butoh to the Seattle dance and performance art scenes in 1990 and launched the first ever Seattle International Butoh Festival. Her pioneering PhD dissertation titled Embodying The Spirit: The Paradox of Performing The Body in Butoh has been presented at dozens of academic conferences and symposiums around the world. Joan's work is highlighted in the award-winning books DANCING INTO DARKNESS: BUTOH, ZEN AND JAPAN and Butoh: Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy by dance scholar Sondra Fraleigh and in Tanya Calamoneris newest book "BUTOH AMERICA."
Joan performs internationally and has been a featured artist at national and international Butoh festivals including the first New York Butoh Festival, Santiago Butoh Festival (Chile), Paris Butoh Festival (France), Portland (OR), Salish Sea Butoh Festival and the UCLA Butoh Symposium (Los Angeles). She has taught workshops and performed in Freiburg, Basel, Oslo, Milan, Warsaw, Vienna, London, and Liverpool and was a featured artist at the Winterwerft Festival in Frankfurt. In additon, Joan performs site-specific work annually at the Seattle Japanese Garden and tours every year in Europe. She is a co-founder of DAIPANbutoh Collective, which produces an annual Butoh festival in Seattle. Joan is an alumni of CU Boulder, where she originally received her Bachelor of Arts in Dance many years ago, and is excited to return to her alma mater!!
ABOUT BUTOH:
Butoh is an avant-garde, iconoclastic form of dance that was developed in the late 1950s at the height of the Japanese Counter Culture Movement through experimental collaborations between its founders Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. Butoh was influenced by Surrealism, Dada, German Expressionism, French Existentialism, Japanese theater and Eastern spiritual thought. Female Butoh dancers Yoko Ashikawa, Natsu Nakajima and Saga Kobayashi also profoundly influenced the course of the art form and its development. Although Butoh is commonly characterized by its extreme slow motion and its gradual, drawn-out unveiling of dark imagery, the choreographic and somatic methods devised by Tatsumi Hijikata represent a revolution in the world of dance. Surrealist techniques are used to generate movements layered with emotions and physical sensations. Butoh represents a shift from the conscious to the worlds of dreams and the subconscious, where each movement, even when it is choreographed, comes from within and is constantly transforming.
*** CONTACT INFO ***
If you have any questions about the workshop or need help signing up,
Email the event organizer at Ivan-Daniel.Espinosa@colorado.edu
|
|
 |
LocationCU ATLAS Institute's Studio Lab 1 (View)
University of Colorado Boulder, 320 UCB, 1125 18th St
Boulder, CO 80309
United States
Categories
| Kid Friendly: No |
| Dog Friendly: No |
| Non-Smoking: No |
|
Contact
|
