Belly Dancing Classes at Visionary Dance Productions

Butoh Workshop

butoh vanessa

Butoh Dance Workshop with Venessa Skantze

Vanessa Skantze began the practice of butoh dance in 2002 shortly after she co-founded the improvisational music/dance ensemble Death Posture in New Orleans. Following many years of writing and performing spoken word, solo and collaborative performance works and physical theater; she dove into the pure language of the body and the power of butoh imagery to transcend personal and human limitations (while continuing to use them as grist and fuel). Throughout Death Posture's New Orleans time and subsequently in Seattle-- where she arrived in 2004 with her dance partner Alex Ruhe-- Vanessa has constantly worked with experimental musicians in performance. Death Posture's created works-- both structured and improvised -- are intimate collaborations between bodies and sound. Vanessa does voice and percussion improvisation with celadon as In the Deep Museum and frequently accompanies butoh workshops and performances as a musician. Vanessa has been leading butoh workshops and classes since 2003. She brings ten years of Ashtanga/Hatha yoga teaching experience, lending her butoh classes a deep body specificity and technique in which to ground butoh imagery. Vanessa and Alex have trained and performed with Jinen Butoh founder Atsushi Takenouchi since 2003. They recently traveled to Italy for four weeks of intensive workshop and performances. Jinen (from an ancient word meaning ALL) dances the manifestation of the universal nervous system, the interwoven cycle of life and death, time and space. Death Posture has also trained and performed with Diego Pinon and Katsura Kan. They create frequent group works, and countless improvisations. Death Posture's major recent works include I miss you, a piece for eight dancers, and FLOOD, for six dancers. Both premiered at Good Shepherd Chapel performance space.
www.deathposture.org
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The class will nurture a deep exploration of the body as instrument-- one that receives and transmits energy. Butoh is a dance of transformation at the cellular level. In butoh we are danced by the water, the wind and any other image/energy we call upon. To facilitate this openness we embark on an intensive physical warmup incorporating elements of yoga and Noguchi exercise as well as butoh training and releasing energy through voice. In developing this focused surrender to the free play of the body's energy channels with a rigorous exploration of the body's physical strength and suppleness (what we call the edge in Ashtanga Yoga practice) we prepare our instrument to experience and manifest with deep revelation and intensity. In the language of Vodou, a great rider (the lwa, or spirit) demands a great horse. Butoh imagery demands a deeply aware mind/body commitment. The rigor of the dance is in the depth of focus and commitment rather than in virtuostic ability.
We will explore the natural movements of waves and spirals, and work with elemental imagery from the natural world as an introduction to butoh. We will be danced by light, heavy, cold, violent, and curious energies. Our bodies will metamorph as we embrace and absorb these, and from this action the dance is born. We seek to create a non-judgmental sacred space within which dancers may open themselves to risk, to explore the feelings rising within and dance those impulses without needing to perform, to look good, or to show what they know... rather butoh leaps off from a point of not-knowing, where awkward, limited and even ugly movements can be all the more compelling because it comes from real feeling.