Dreams of Seasons Passed

This post is dedicated to this dreamy dancing life and some key performances that have arisen from soul, imagination and sensation during the past 5 moons (except Memorial Dance which was a homage to WW II veteran Kazuo Ohno presented on 5/31/10 with live video released publicly on 6/1/11 in memory of sensei's passing 1 year ago).

Memorial Dance was performed at Langley Middle School as part of the poetry of veterans shared for VRC Annual Memorial Day Tribute event.

http://youtu.be/nwQETuSnTbU

People Get Ready was an improv performance offering by facilitators Melinda Harrison and Maureen Freehill, to close the Significant Other butoh & LifeArt Mastery workshop at NatureMoves studio in Boulder. Music is Vanilla Fudge's "People Get Ready."

http://vimeo.com/24731981

Significant Others Final Dance Offerings: Meha & Momo

Cottonwood Sunrise was a dancing gift after the Significant Other workshop in Boulder, CO offered by WilderDancer Christine Palafox. A homage to sunrise and the presence of her neighborhood cottonwood tree. David Harrison accompanied, we danced and she directed the score. Camera by John Lorette & Momo. The full piece is included here to get a sense of actual sunrise time/light shifts.

http://youtu.be/ZFxqaJSYBcQ

Lady of the Lake on MayDay was an event directed by accordion player Jason Webley for one of his four "death rememberings" on cross-quarter days in 2011; leading to a culminating performance on 11/11/11. Only participants in these events will discover the location of a final performance on 11/11/11. This dance happened on MayDay eve on Boat Street in Seattle from 11:11pm till late into the night during about 11 trips as about 11 passengers headed out on a 100 year old boat to drink and offer healing medicine tea into the lake. Maureen was the "Lady in White" while Rick was "St. Joan's" captain and Lee Atwell filmed.

http://youtu.be/FkSYgoiciz8

Hitobashira is a piece that Maureen has been creating since 2001 with imagery from Japanese history stating that human sacrifices/suicides were common when building bridges or castles or when lovers were wanting to be together for eternity. Most commonly the accompaniment is a score composed by sound artist Pamela Z specifically for this piece. This performance was at 11:11 on 3/11/11, the morning of the Japanese tsunami and improvised with dancer Delisa Myles under a bridge in the snow melt in Prescott, AZ. Camera by John Lorette.

http://youtu.be/PyS3oXjNZQQ

Dream Lake was a solo piece in Rocky Mountain National Park at an alpine lake of that name. Filmed by Momo & Richard Shane.

http://youtu.be/rDLfpTMbhms

Still Moment(s) Rising is a edit mash-up of 3 different performances of the same short piece about a spring shoot rising from the cold ground into the sunlight. One is at Unitarian Universalist in Freeland, Wa; one at Unity Church in Langley, Wa and one at BeBe Theater in Asheville NC for the Fools Butoh Festival there in April.

http://youtu.be/He2Xm3504Ms

Thank you all for watching and offering reflections below. The spaces for the Somatic Building Internships are steadily filling. Contact Momo soon if you are interested in joining us sometime this summer. It is so wonderful here....a dream coming true!

a clearing

"For a dancer, God is SPACE." -Yoshito Ohno

Before there can be anything, there must be a clearing. In this clearing a11 creation is possible. This is true for butoh as it is for life. We may have tried and tried to "make" something happen and then one day; one moment, it just was clear.

The gratitude I feel for finally beginning to realize this 20+ year dream of creating a butoh dance sanctuary is immense. It is barely beginning to manifest and already I feel clear what will come forth here. First, a clearing...then a calling...then a blessing & seeding....then a team building & sweating & working & playing....then a grand opening.....then an entering...then a being, creating, dancing, improvising, growing, moving, blossoming! Just like for a flower, this spring ground is being prepared for a spacial mandala of sacred geometry filled with dance & community to grow up, flower and offer its fruits here.

But, amidst the celebration let us not forget the LOSS....of life. The sacrifice of plants & animals here so that this vision might come forth. The feelings are mixed here of such joy, excitement and gratitude with remorse, compassion, tenderness and asking forgiveness from these relatives who's lives are being changed, and in some cases ended, because of our dream coming true. Beloved relatives, we care and thank you for your offerings and for allowing this clearing to be made. We will continue to converse with you as we dance here for a long time to come.

There will be a SEEDING ceremony and celebration here the first week of May. This is always a most special week for me because in my family, most all of us were born in this week and in Japan it is always the "Golden Week" holidays. Now it will also be the time when we will thank all who made this possible (including YOU) and SEEDs of blessing will be planted in the central foundation pi11ar for this space. Although this 11-sided dance & retreat space is designed to be totally portable, this first location is very significant. The seeds we place here in this 7-sided pi11ar ("Bashira" in Japanese) will become a time capsule of sorts that can be hatched again some generations in the future to reveal the qualities we held as ancestors. What will the world be like then? Will our butoh have made a difference?

I know there will be gifts in there from my forbears & the "roots" of butoh: Kazuo Ohno, Yoshito and the land of Japan itself. I know there will be objects and blessings from my fellow dancers, closest family and friends as well as many students and members of our company. If YOU feel called to include an object of blessing, a SEED; please let me know and I will tell you the address to mail it...or better yet, to come plant it yourself in person!

ALSO: Contact Momo asap if you are interested in joining our Somatic Building Site Butoh workshop for one or more of 9 weekends between Memorial Day & October 9th....Please consider joining us at the MomoButoh Somatic Building Site (ala work of Nala Walla & bCollective). Build sweat equity and learn mad ski11s with a superFUN team and master craftsman. Interns get FREE butoh & building instruction, all organic vegetarian meals, accommodations and bodywork on beautiful Whidbey Island. Spaces filling fast--only 4 left for Memorial Day weekend.

wilderdance photo above by tim lacey

So, this dance comes between the April DREAM Project and the May PLANTS & ANIMALS project--addressing them both.

http://youtu.be/VMByXCNxiE0

music: Ursula Keiser, Jodlerklub Eglisau

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study of styles

This has been an interesting theme so far. With so many possible styles to absorb there is always something new.

A couple days ago I met Momo for a session. She pointed out some of the elements of my own personal style, such as preferring very outdoorsy locations and flowing motions. I find it is true that I tend to follow a pattern in my dance, which is a bit ironic because I started butoh to break out of old patterns. So I can see the wisdom in challenging ourselves to try new styles. To break out of old patterns, to learn new gifts to incorporate in the dance and in life, to foster creativity and innovation.

In this dance with Momo we tried several different styles, for example my usual flowing one to more linear staccato movements. Besides learning some new styles I had a lot of fun with this one.

Many thanks to Momo and to Kazuo Ohno.

FreeSTYLE on 1/1/11 and beyond

Kazuo Ohno used the term "FreeStyle" very often when instructing us in butoh dance at his studio (photos here of Momo dancing "freestyle" in the Kazuo Ohno Dance Studio by Nobuko Shiga).

Now that we are investigating The Styles with MomoButoh Dance Company from 1/1/11 till 2/2/11; echos of his directions are repeating inside me. What is it to dance "freestyle?" On 1/1/11 at 11:11 am I initiated a dance improvisation ceremony to celebrate this New Year of E11evens. It included appearances by invited friends moving in all speeds, levels, styles, emotions and directions. It included passers by like a bird pecking at the vomit likely left by someones New Year's Eve revelation and a coffee cup carrying crow who knocked it percussively on the pavement; providing a soundtrack for our dance along with a jumbo jet flying low & slow over 11th street (we were on 10th & Pike) in Seattle. At about 6 min in, I encountered an unused cigarette and crumbled its contents in a circle on a dumpster, offering tobacco with prayers for a good year for all my relations. It was a magical and totally unplanned 11 minutes that culminated with dancing in an underground (literally) painting studio of someone I met right there on the street during the dance. It was all filmed.

Sadly, I did not immediately dowload the footage of this event and now must learn from my delinquency & mistake. My flip video camera broke on 1/6/11 just before I attended the Picasso exhibit at the Seattle Art Museum. I sent in the broken camera for a replacement (Technical Side NOTE: They are doing this for me even though it is NOT under warrantee anymore because we found the original receipt and they say I am a "valued customer", cool!! --this is ONE reason I suggest all DailyDance practitioners get a FLIP camera). I asked them to retrieve the films "stuck" on the camera, and will post it here if they do. But this will likely never happen. So, please use your infinite imagination to re-create in "freestyle" what this dance ceremony might have appeared like there in the bright sunshine, in front of a horse trough turned bamboo garden planter and a drive shaft handled metal doorway with a wooden barrel for a light fixture and sheet metal for a sign closed club entryway. A very urban STYLE place to begin 2011 for sure. One of the few human passers by happened to be my good friend from the dance community -Louis Gervais...what a blessing to have the likes of him be one of my first spontaneous dance partners for 2011!! It is going to be a very fine and WILD year of FreeSTYLE indeed. Can't wait for 11/11/11 of course....

And, regarding the "Freestyle" that Kazuo Ohno would regularly call out for, I believe this may be the MOST difficult thing to do in butoh, dance and life. How can we truly be free? What does that even mean? How can we dance and act free of conditioning, ideas of right/wrong, good/bad, self imposed constraints on our spontaneously emerging actions and creativity? It would be as if we were unrestrained and totally available puppets of unfolding Creation. On 1/3/11 I may have experienced a tiny and ecstatic glimpse into this while sharing a trio improvisation score with improvisational dance luminaries John Dixon and Karen Nelson. After an afternoon of Contemplative Dance Practice we discussed an experimental score whereby the only "rules" were to follow your "embodied impulses" and when finding you were NOT doing that (such as following a mental thought or idea of what to do/not do) then to PAUSE and begin again only from an embodied impulse. This may sound quite vague but what emerged was a rare revelatory and amazingly fulfilling experience for all of us. We shared a freestyle dance for about 30 minutes of what we agreed was almost total presence and direct communion with BEING (self, each other, god?) self-emerging in action through the body. I felt perhaps that this was what Kazuo had been trying to convey when he would repeat "FREESTYLE!!" (in English) over and over while we improvised during his lessons.

I would love to hear/see what you think/see is "FreeSTYLE"...I would love to hear what happened for you if you try the meditation/movement improvisation score I explained above. please offer a comment or blog response if you are moved. Thank you.

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Emerging from Womb of EARTH: Happy Birthday Sensei

This past 6 months since master Kazuo Ohno passed have been deep ones for soul searching and development. I had to take a rest from the computer for a while to regroup, recharge and revision the direction to take with MomoButoh. I spent three days and nights just prior to his birthday in October in dark retreat for deep visioning and prayer. I was laying in a hut upon the EARTH without light, movement, food or water. Upon emerging just before dawn, I danced awkwardly with this new body, a new life. (See film below) Thank you dear ancestor sensei for providing the ground, the foundation upon which I dwell (and especially your precious gift of your fabulous long underwear!). May these daily dances build upon and reach beyond the foundation you created for us all. .