Each two hour workshop focuses on vocal technique and physical presence. We begin by warming up to connect with our breath and bodies. Through gentle repetition of vowels, consonants, bubbling, and babbling, we expand our vocal range. Listening to one another, playfully passing sound and movement, we find our unique songs and create compositions together.
There is a lot to discover and share!
No previous experience necessary, all ages and abilities encouraged. There is a stairway at the indoor entrance of the building, approximately fifteen stairs with handrails.
Join us, Saturday afternoon March 4, as we tie dye our Hot Mess! T-shirts and anything else 100% cotton with the master of fabrics, Ms. Mary Tabar. We will provide HM t-shirts, and BYO any Clothing Swap items & anything else you’d like to try. Also! There’s a Photo Booth with our great friend Ricardo Adame, so bring some oldies, get some freshies, and smile in the BEST light! We will have a pot of Veggie Chili and some glorious fixins’ to boot. BYO anything else you’d like to share, not required but adored! FREE
PLUS Get a behind the scenes look at OBS and chill with friends! We’ll be playing some HOT Hits from the 7 previous Hot Mess! episodes, talking about what’s in store for 2023.
This Baltimore based movement initiative brewed from an idea to collaborate between Cristal Sabbagh and Peter Redgrave. It began in 2017, as a container to explore horizontal organization in ensemble performance. Seeking to bring the macrocosm of our embodied histories into the microcosm of group dynamics, we make time to listen to all the voices in the space and create work we are all excited to perform. Over time, Move Move Collaborative has adapted to center care and become an intentional space of exploration across difference.
Move Move hosts an annual gathering where people come together to share body based practices and modes of thinking with the body, all while keeping our sense organs facing performance. This past summer (and last), the group met on the land of company member Orlando Johnson, Gray’s Manor Farm:
Gray’s Manor Farm is a parcel of land located between the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay and Patuxent River near Port Republic, Mutual Consent, Island Creek in Maryland. Gray’s Manor is a Black and Piscataway descent – owned farm that has been in my family since 1830. I stepped up to inherit the land 14 years ago. While we allowed family and friends to farm it, no one had resided on the property for 12 years before I got it.
Today I am practicing permaculture and herbalism. I have been amending the soil and working on the future of the property, being a means of sanctuary and solitude, a wellness center. One of the main goals is to be a place where people can have peace in all the simple and complex ways the land can provide.
Orlando Johnson
Saturday, November 12 4:20pm & 8:00pm Central Standard Time
Hot Mess! Episode 7 features MOVE MOVE Collaborative artists working on score developments in real time, together. (visit World Clock to find your location time) Each set lasts 60-90 minutes
Baltimore_Chicago bridge featuring artists of Move Move Collaborative 2022: Orlando Johnson, Peter Redgrave, Cristal Sabbagh, Ashley Shey, Matt Williams, Emmett Wilson, Chrissy Martin, Lorene Bouboushian, Sara Zalek, plus Ralph Darden and Dalia Chin
Supported in part by the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, especially for #YearofChicagoDance #yocd
Earlier in the Day, check them out plus many more at Family Day at the MCA 11:00am. See ffftchicago.com for details.
Members of Move Move Collaborative: Cristal Sabbagh’s performance practice, rooted in improvisation and Butoh, walks a line between the everyday, the divine, the personal, and the political. In embodying in her art transformational memories while simultaneously celebrating pop culture and the experimental, she challenges power structures and awakens the viewer’s senses. Working both in a solo capacity and with collaborators, Sabbagh is equally attuned to individual perspectives and collective structures. Her son, Julius Sabbagh joins her making his own music composed using app technology.
Peter Redgrave is an interdisciplinary performing artist and educator based in Baltimore, Maryland. In his solo work, he explores vulnerability and the direct energetic exchange between performer and audience. In collaborative work he values the complex and deep connection of consensus. He cut his performing teeth in 1990’s Chicago in performative bands like Mother Country Death Rattle, 2X4, and Smelling Salt Amusements. Since 2010 he has trained with dancers, opening and accessing joints, unlocking images held in the fibres of the body. He works in improvisation and score based movement work. Redgrave often uses open adaptable structures to build performances which can be shaped by the spaces where they are presented. He has performed at Under the Counter Culture in Cardiff, Wales, the High Zero Festival, AKIMBO, a festival for site specific dance, Transmodern Festival, and the Philadephia Freeform Festival in 2016. He has performed across North America and Europe.
Orlando Johnson is an interdisciplinary artist, musician, herbalist and activist. He is the steward of Gray’s Manor Farm, a permaculture center in Calvert County, MD that has been African-American owned since 1830. Orlando has performed with Chris Taylor, Baba L’Salaam, Isa Leal, Peter Redgrave, and Jeron White. He has curated art exhibitions and performances including a benefit for Standing Rock. He has performed in High Zero Festival, Fields Fest 2016, and with the Move Move Collaborative. All of Orlando’s work is an expression of protest for the discontent around how we conduct ourselves as a society. He seeks to tend the conditions that we need as organisms in a robust, vital, and healthy ecosystem.
Ashley Shey is a body linguist. She is a first generation Cameroonian American artist born in Washington, DC who carries on her cultural traditions of dance and storytelling as a means for remembrance and self-knowledge. Through improvisational dance and experimental performance, she engages the potential for alchemical transformation in each moment through use of meditative movement.
Emmett Wilson is also called ‘Ew! The Dancer’ amongst other names that are connected to stories they tell with their body. They grew up dancing in the Houston Met Dance studio, earned a BFA at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City, where they stayed and made many body-based performances while working as the community garden coordinator of The City Library; they’re now planted in Philadelphia where they were a fellow at the Headlong Performance Institute in the spring of 2021. They often venture down to Baltimore to be with their cousin and her son (who’s a dog named Lhasa), and to play with friends and artists in MoveMove. Emmett graduated from the Crestone Healing Arts Center in May of 2022- their practice is called Dear Body. All of Emmett’s work hinges upon improvisationally harnessing the power of embarrassment and stewarding ecosystems in biological as well as psycho-spiritual ways.
Matthew Williams is a Baltimore-based nonbinary interdiscilinary artist and educator working in dance/performance. Their performance practice is inspired by the human body as a site for choice, liberation, and a means to be in relationship with place and community. Matthew has organized for Move Move Collaborative, an annual movement intensive where artists gather in Baltimore to make a performance by consensus. They have taught acting at Towson University, community movement research, and nature-based youth education. Matthew has BA in American Cultural Studies (Bates College) and an MFA in Theatre Arts (Towson University), has been published by Emergency Index, Witchcraft, Hyrsteria, and PotluckMag. Their performance work has been presented by: Labbodies Performance Art Review,Transmodern Festival, and Baltimore Independent Dance Artists.
Chrissy Martin is an interdisciplinary performance artist and movement educator with roots in contemporary dance forms, Afro-Caribbean dance, postmodern experimental music, jazz vocals, and physical theater. Chrissy blends contemporary dance and language/voice to rigorously examine her intersecting queer and neurodivergent identities. She graduated with a bachelor’s degree in music with a focus on social praxis from New College of Florida in 2010 and received her MFA in choreography and performance from Smith College in 2022. Somatic practices such as Pilates, GYROTONIC® Expansion System, Body Mind Centering and Laban/Bartenieff Fundamentals inform Chrissy’s integrated movement style, and she is a certified Pilates and GYROTONIC® instructor. Martin is an avid member of the global contact improvisation community, and has facilitated and taught contact around the midwest.
Lorene Bouboushian (they/them) is a genderqueer artist exploring lament as a form of critique and query into late capitalist woes. They utilize their experience in various somatic modalities to purposefully place their moving body and shapeshifting voice in uncomfortable, difficult situations. This is an attempt to shoot the quotidian psychological terror and apathy (i.e. the synthesized residue of on-demand streaming services, doomscrolling, virtue signaling, cultural amnesia, supply chain issues, civil forfeiture, etc.) through the body and back out to all of you. Refrigerated ancestral trauma and white guilt also make a consistent appearance. http://lorenebouboushian.org
Chicago-based Costa Rican flutist Dalia Chin is a founding member of Fonema Consort and the Chicago Composers Orchestra, both of which are dedicated to performing music by living composers. She has been in residence and given performances at institutions including New England Conservatory, the University of Chicago, Northwestern University, Oberlin Conversarory, Harvard University, the Universidad de Costa Rica, Scripps College, UNAM (Mexico City), the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, the 113 Composers Collective and North Central College. She has performed in festival and at venues including Visiones Sonoras (Morela), the Florida Flute Convention, Festival Interfaz (Monterrey), Omaha Under the Radar, the Ear Taxi Festival, the Festival Internacional de Chihuahua, the Museo Universitario de Arte Contemporaneo ( Mexico City), the Teatro Sucre (Quito), the City of Chicago’s Pritzker Pavilion, and National Sawdust.
Ralph Darden is a Chicago-based musician, DJ & composer. As an adolescent he developed a profound love of hip hop, jazz, reggae, and punk. This played an essential role in the formation of his musical identity.
He spent the 90s learning the process of writing, recording, and touring in several DIY punk bands. In the early 2000s, Darden was the founder, lead singer & multi-instrumentalist of the dub-infused post punk group, The Jai Alai Savant. He currently tours and performs as a guitarist and backing vocalist with Ted Leo & The Pharmacists.
Darden composes music for films & television. Some examples of his previous work include Polish Bar (2010), The Inheritance (2011), Lac Du Flambeau (2012), Comcast’s Gross World (2012) and Mondo Media’s Happy Tree Friends (2015), As well as commercial work for Hasbro’s Transformers Kreo (2016) and Melagro Tequila (2016). In 2021, he began his foray into the world of collaborative improvisation by providing live score for Yasmine Spiro’s visual art & dance performance titled Dawtas.
For nearly 3 decades, Darden has been DJing events around the globe under the moniker of “DJ Major Taylor”. Starting in Philadelphia in the mid 90’s, he states “..initially I just wanted to be a casual selector, playing roots and dub reggae records, but I found myself immersed in a world of really amazing hip hop DJs & turntablists & that influenced me in a big way.” As DJ Major Taylor, his scratch-laden, dance-friendly, genre-defying sets, showcase an ability to weave his eclectic palate of influences into a sonic tapestry, distinctly his own. His experience as a DJ has informed his recent experiments in beat-making and sound collage.
Boston_Chicago bridge, featuring artists: Aza, Amanu, Jinlu Luo, Dubi Kaufman, Christine Shallenberg, Sara June & Max Lord
Hot Mess! is a play space where we invite the chaos of the unfamiliar into our process, together. We focus on the moments of co-creation, discover new ways of working together, interacting with the audience, connecting both in person and online. Hot Mess! demonstrates the power of working together in the unknown, seeks possibilities for Queering space, and centers the joy and beauty in re-starting while making art! All ages are invited.
Supported in part by the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, especially for #YearofChicagoDance #yocd
Baltimore_Chicago bridge featuring artists of Move Move Collaborative: Orlando Johnson, Chrissy Martin, Peter Redgrave, Cristal Sabbagh, Ashley Shey, Matt Williams, Emmett Wilson, Lorene Bouboushian, Sara Zalek, plus DJ Major Taylor and Dalia Chin
Elastic Arts is a non-profit organization that fosters a community of music, art and performance in the Avondale/Logan Square neighborhoods of Chicago and beyond through developing, hosting, producing, and promoting creative, independent, and local music concerts, exhibitions, and multi-arts performances.
Amanu
Featured Artist bios: Amanu started their storytelling journey through make-believe w/ their sibling creating worlds and characters to inhabit. Soon spiral notebooks birthed drawings, stories, and poetry. It wasn’t long until they fell in love with freestyling & helped form the rap crew, Jus-Us League. In 2001 they moved to Chicago & joined the jazz-based band Daily Bridge Club. In 2007 joined the iNNERvISIONISTS, an organic Hip-Hop band. There, they met Casagrown, formed the rap duo BADWOLFF & perform all over Chicago at venues such as Beat Kitchen, Subterranean, Elbo Room, and The Mutiny. Amanu’s poetry stylings are rooted in rituals of storytelling & the delights of language.
Aza
Aza is a performance and visual artist and co-conspirator at No Nation Tangential Unspace Art Lab. This Coalescence is one to galavant in dreamscapes, ancestral juke joints, chaturbate masturbation web temples, loose-tooth tanks, and the Heartspace. They organize Smudge Cinema Project, a now-and-then screening series that takes a look at what happens when a film is projected on a wall for people to watch. Metabolization seems to be what they appear to do, lately.
Sara June
Sara June is a Boston-based performance artist working primarily in butoh, movement improvisation and installation. She is the director of the annual Boston Butoh Festival and is co-director of Boston’s oldest experimental artists’ collective, the Mobius Artists Group. She and sound artist Max Lord compose the performance duo Lord and June whose past commissions include a gallery performance for an exhibition of the acclaimed Hiroshima Panels by Japanese artists Iri and Toshi Maruki at Boston University and an outdoor movement and spatialized-sound work for Fujiko Nakaya’s Fog x FLO installation in Frederick Law Olmsted’s Emerald Necklace.
Max Lord
Max Lord is a Boston-based improvisor who has worked in a variety of rock, noise, electronic and improv settings. Though originally identifying as a percussionist, since 2000 he has performed with Buchla electronic instruments including the Marimba Lumina, an exotic mallet controller. His recorded work as Ghost Grass recalls mid-century electronic experimentation as often as more modern improvised approaches, and is intimately tied to the magnetic medium on which it is created.
Dubi Kaufman
Dubi Kaufmanm makes interactive art. He uses code, cellphones, screen printing or bicycle parts to make art that sparks joy.
Christine Shallenberg is a multimedia artist whose work ranges in scale from performative physical encounters to mediated light and sound installations to participatory choreographies for audiences. Christine has been nominated for a Bessie (NY Dance and Performance Award) in visual design for David Neumann’s Restless Eye, for which she designed a system for scanning and translating the performers’ EEG brain waves into large-scale lighting shifts for the entire performance space. She also worked as the Lighting Designer for the Merce Cunningham Dance Company for whom she designed Second Hand, Antic Meet, Nearly 902 and more than 30 unique Event performances seen around the world.
Jinlu Luo I’m not very good at explaining my work through concepts, but I believe that while a personal history can be cosmetically touched-up, the history of one’s art cannot be changed. Once work is done it is done. My artwork is my soul, my emotions, my feelings, and my heart, displaying my experience of the world. My dramatization of thought is for my own purpose. I’m the audience of my own performance. What I can get a witness is not necessarily the performance product, which is to say the staging of ideas to audience eyes, but rather the dramatization of thought in the creative process itself. The staging of a performer-position gives second life to a personality. For this moment, being the director is not simply a metaphor for the struggle to make decisions but more a creative practical strategy to determine the route of a collaborative body. I consider the importance of casting as an alternative family, and thus my solo is a single-person household. My self-presentation is my own house, a solitary architecture on an open landscape of audience. This building oneself to a particular structure is always a moment of suffering. Here is a person-role.
Producer and Director of Hot Mess!, Sara Zalek is an Avant-garde maker of situations and curious objects. Rooted in physical investigations of improvisation, resilience, and transformation, their work is intimate, raw, poetic. They create performances, learning situations, and sensing environments to encourage thoughtful interpersonal connections.
Sara Zalek
Zalek performs often and in both live and online situations; most recently named an “Esteemed Artist” by The City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs and Special Events (DCASE). In 2021 they held a curatorial residence at Elastic Arts, and in 2020 were in virtual residence at the Dance Center at Columbia College of Chicago, a Chicago Dancemakers Forum Lab Artist (2015), a 3Arts Make a Wave Awardee, and a Ragdale Foundation Fellow. They have performed and curated workshops and festivals at the Chicago Cultural Center, Elastic Arts, Experimental Sound Studio, Links Hall, Japanese Culture Center, CoProsperity Sphere, No Nation Tangential Unspace Art Lab, dfbrl8r, Outerspace, UrBandGuild, and many more.
SUNFLOWERS FOR ZVENIGORA*
Wannapa P-Eubanks performs at a performance art series to benefit refugees from Ukraine. Photo by Liv Nunn Band
with Wannapa P-Eubanks Saturday Aug.27 & Sunday Aug.28, 2022 10am – 1pm each day Location: (TBA outdoors in Evanston, IL)
Two day workshop culminating in group ritual performance. Three hours each day, outside and under the sky!
Mindfully focus on unearthing deep connection to oneself, each other, and Nature. Weaving these elements relationship, telling story and expressing it through Butoh movements and/or words, etc…[Sky is unlimited]
In hope to re-inspire, to re-spark joy and sense of togetherness.
What to bring: Yoga mat and blanket for some on the ground work, comfortable layers, clothes, snacks and water. Stay hydrated! Include bug spray or sunscreen as needed.
All levels are welcome. Email me with any questions or accessibility needs.
Wannapa performing at Freedom From and Freedom To at Elastic Arts. Photo by Liina Raud
Wannapa P-Eubanks is as a Butoh dance performer, Improviser, Choreographer, Movement Coach, and emerging actor, who creates expressive dance/ movement inspired by personal memories. Her performances often stems from a personal experience or a specific memory that grows into a poetic image that she imbues with the memory. Her venues include Goodman Theatre, Raven Theatre, Chicago Cultural Center, The Athenaeum Theatre, Victory GardenTheatre, MCA, Links Hall, Ruth Page Center for the Arts, Access Living, Out of Site Chicago, Elastic Arts, and many more… She was selected to be one of Chicagoan artists to showcase for Dance/USA 2011 at the Dance Center of Columbia College Chicago. Wannapa has been part of Laura Crotte’s theatre group to present the “Day of the Death” show for students in Chicago schools. She is a former company member of Erasing the Distance [ETD.]: a documentary theatre exploring mental health. As one of the 4 selected grantees of ETD, she has conceived and produced the performance piece titled: “Through My Daughter’s Eyes” as part of the 2016 PopUp Series for Erasing the Distance by collaborating Theater, and Butoh in the work. Her recent work as a Movement Coach/Choreographer for Collectivo El Pozo theatre group, and Out of Site Chicago to perform in 2018, 2019, Live Streaming in May 2020, and Summer Open-Flow interactive Public performance in collaboration with Chicago Park District in August 2021. She has taught Butoh workshops such as Butoh workshop for actors at Collaboraction Theatre Company, Erasing the Distance [Doc.Fest 2018], Halcyon Theatre, Butoh Body, Chicago Inclusive Dance Festival 2019 [Co-curated by Body Work, Access Living, and Momenta], and individuals artists/actors as part of movement coaching.
Together, we explore promiscuously inventive hybrids of tech media film music theater noise talk show jazz low brow glitch channelling queer family dance score improvs visual collage…either way it’s riveting and in the moment- these five artists are making stunning works individually and as a collective in Hot Mess! fashion: simultaneously live-streamed and experienced in person. Audience and artists alike can expect to flex VR and interpersonal skills while also adapting to new tools, technology and experiences. This space becomes anything we want it to be.
Marcy Rae Henry es una Latina de Los Borderlands who studied stuff in Spain, India, Burma and Nepal, hitchhiked around France, Spain and Portugal and motorbiked through the Middle East. Her writing has received a Chicago Community Arts Assistance Grant, an Illinois Arts Council Fellowship, a Pushcart Prize nomination and first prize in Ember Chasm’s 2021 Novel Excerpt Contest. Her writing and visual art appear in The Columbia Review, carte blanche, Epiphany, The Southern Review, Cauldron Anthology and The Brooklyn Review, among others. DoubleCross Press will publish her chapbook ‘We Are Primary Colors’ this year. www.marcyraehenry.com
Marcy Rae HenryHarlan RosenMeenakshi Harlen Rosen, photo by Ji YangShoshana GreenMeenakshi MarchionePhotographs of SheenRu Yong by Michelle MishinaSheenRu Yong
SheenRu Yong is a dance artist, choreographer, and the initiator of body portal theatre. She began dancing at Wesleyan University and then trained in New York City and Taipei, where she was commissioned and inspired to choreograph evening-length shows, site-specific works, and community-based performances. While earning her MFA in Choreography at the Taipei National University of the Arts, she toured internationally with Legend Lin Dance Theatre. Through the platform body portal theatre, she works to research and develop the creative potentials of the individual, collective, and environmental bodies we inhabit. She is currently based in Honolulu. www.bodyportaltheatre.com
Shoshana Green is an experimental artist using movement and image to study “process” and “relationships” within and between the quotidian, esoteric and one’s living interiority. She works with the body as a sculptural representation, a mysterious territory of sensations and a channel for giving form to non-verbal narratives. Shoshana is a teacher, curator and presenter for Butoh Programming in San Francisco. She is also a somatic psychotherapist in private practice. www.butohsf.com, shoshanagreentherapy.com
MeenakshiM is an emerging multidisciplinary artist who has incorporated experimental video, dance, and sound art in her work. In her films, she often explores concepts around the interconnectivity of humans and our relationship with nature. As a sound artist, she frequently mixes electronic sources with live vocals to create a variety of harsh, textural, melodic, and cerebral sonic experiences. During these times, she seeks to enhance the physicality of sound and bridge the gap between virtual and in-person human experiences. As a recent graduate of Mills College, she continues to draw from the school’s rich traditions of experimental electronic music as inspiration across all facets of her work. Meenakshi is elated to be contributing to the local performing arts scene(s) here in Chicago. @mak3shine3
Harlan Rosen performs like a playful kitty, getting stuck in a variety of boxes just for the joy of plotting their escape. As a mover and shaker, they have performed in ensemble works by Tadashi Endo, Joan Laage, Carole McCurdy, Ginger Krebs, and Mitsu Salmon, and have presented their own multimedia performances at Outerspace, Hamlin Park Theater, VHS, No Nation, and Elastic Arts. They live in a rent-controlled anterior temporal nucleus in your head, where they are currently dressed in drag as a duck and trying desperately to yodel.
Hot Mess! is a quarterly series produced by Sara Zalek in partnership with Elastic Arts. View a playlist of past performances: If you are or you know an artist interested in participating, complete this survey to get a sense of your interest and the program. This is a paid opportunity.
This project is partially supported by an Individual Artist Program Grant from the City of Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs & Special Events, as well as a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency, a state agency through federal funds provided by the National Endowment for the Arts.
Open Broadcaster Software LIVE Improvising Environment Saturday, March 5, 2022 @Elastic Arts 3429 W Diversey Ave #208
TWO SETS IRL and live streaming 4:20pm & 8:pm CST
Featuring: Yumiko Yoshioka @yumiko-yoshioka (virtually from Tokyo) Charles Joseph Smith @charlessmith702210 Carole McCurdy @carolemccurdy Kikù Hibino @kiku.hibino [️] pronounced “Hypothetical Star”: M_m<M and nulltopia @mmmtvdotnet
For each set we invited a live audience and live-streamed online. In person audience size depends on Covid conditions, you must be vaccinated and wear a mask inside Elastic Arts.
This series focuses on the moments of co-creation and gives the artists a playful space to discover new ways of working together and interacting with the audience. The performance itself demonstrates the power of working together in the unknown, possibilities for Queering space, and the beauty in re-starting while making art!
Yumiko Yoshioka in a wide sumo stance, pointing a stick toward a painted brown circle on a cement wall. She dons a yellow rain coat and an impish look on her face. The sunlight creates a high contrast shadow.
Coming SOON, Yumiko will be hosting a very special Chicago-style Butoh class, broadcasting live and in person from her home in Tokyo.
March 18-20, 2022 On Zoom (listed below in Chicago, Honolulu, Tokyo time, dial in from Anywhere)
Register for one, two, or all three classes Friday in Chicago 8-9:30pm; Honolulu 3-4:30pm; Tokyo 10-11:30am (Saturday) Saturday in Chicago 8-9:30pm; Honolulu 3-4:30pm; Tokyo 10-11:30am (Sunday) Sunday in Chicago 8-10pm; Honolulu 3-5pm; Tokyo 10-12pm (Monday)
Three 90 minute classes with an opportunity for Q&A after the third class on March 20.
Yumiko has brought her very unique teaching to us many times in person, and this is her third online class for us during pandemic. We all look forward to the days when she will come again in person. For this set of classes we explore a new idea, won’t you join us?
What is onomatopoeia? (the sound that is the movement, for example, yura yura , puka puka, Aun, papipupepo….)
The word onomatopoeia comes from the combination of two Greek words, one meaning ‘name’ and the other meaning ‘I’ make. So, literally, onomatopoeia means the name (or sound) I make. For example, splat! or boing! Both these words are onomatopoeic and they mean nothing more than what they sound like.
These sounds become both playful and useful tools to deepen and cultivate our body and sensorial awareness.
Belonging to a third generation of Butoh artists, Yumiko has developed a personal style of bodywork called Body Resonance, which integrates Butoh practice with features of Noguchi Taiso gymnastics and various other Asian training methods to help prepare the body to receive and transmit dance and inspirations. Body Resonance starts from the idea that the world, including our body and soul, consists of vibrational waves that create constant resonances like echoes. When we tune our body to that frequency, we receive images, feelings and sensations accordingly. For this to happen, we need first to shake off unnecessary tension. In effect, we make a white canvas of our body to paint new color on it. I teach this as neutralization, encouraging a close-to-zero state, scouring off rust and polishing antenna to catch waves from profound layers of the body. The transformations and concentrations of dancing break up the eggshell of form. They melt down the armor of our ego, allowing resonant memories to emerge from our cells that are floating in the primal liquid of time.
(www.yumiko-yoshioka.com)
Yumiko Yoshioka pushes against the ground with the balls of her feet, facing us in a red tunic, with her head to the side, eyes and mouth open, and her braid pointing downward. Her arms dangle with gravity. Her shadow is a high contrast and behind her is a spray painted cement wall, with bright colors and basic shapes of blue, brown, and red.
May 6 – 8, 2022 Workshop in St.Cergue (near Geneva) in Switzerland contact : Joseph Viatte viattejoseph@gmail.com
Nov 19 and 20 at 8pm Dance Theater at Tanz Tangente in Berlin Steglitz (3G rule) HIROs Lied (Hiro´s Songs) About an immigrant Japanese mother with dementia
Dance: Asuka J. Riedl, Yumiko Yoshioka Choreography: Yoriko Maeno, Stage design: Mikako Kura
Yumiko Yoshioka. A face with a hand like a claw above it. Her torso in front of a brick wall, in a black tuxedo jacket, bright pink/red lips, her chin and cheekbones jutting up and forward, slightly cross-eyed, she has a look of defiance, a bit smug, with a tight smile.
Intensivos de danza butō por Marlène Jöbstl, en La Sala De Las Bestias ( R1 Ocata – Barcelona )
19, 20, 21 de marzo Activismo & Tabúes o El cuerpo político social en la danza
9, 10, 11 de abríl Erotismo & Gore o Explorar la insolencia en la danza 17 y 18 de abríl El Arte De Nacer seminario intensivo de butosofia por Jonathan Martineau
Leer más sobre las temáticas y pedagogías enunciadas:
On Zoom (listed below in Chicago, Honolulu, Tokyo time) Friday in Chicago 8-9:30pm; Honolulu 3-4:30pm; Tokyo 10-11:30am Saturday in Chicago 8-9:30pm; Honolulu 3-4:30pm; Tokyo 10-11:30am Sunday in Chicago 8-9:30pm; Honolulu 3-4:30pm; Tokyo 10-11:30am
**MAKE SURE TO FIND TIMES ACCORDING TO YOUR TIME ZONE. USE THE WORLD CLOCK**
Workshop Content: *Release exercises, inspired by Noguchi Taiso (Gymnastics), Taichi and Yoga *Breathing exercises *Dynamic training for the flow of energy *Butoh-related work to activate our universal memories (sensitization, combination of image and movement with antenna exercises such as figure of 8, water ball, animal, insect, snake, witch and fairy, the creatures inside us, hanging body, walking, dialogue with a partner etc) *Structured improvisation, free association
Yumiko Yoshioka, somewhat crouched, yet reaching toward us, the viewer, in a vibrant red dress, her hands splayed palms facing down and out in front of her. Her mouth is open and her eyes wide in surprised or terrible or wonderful thing. Her black hair whirs forward, stirred by the wind of her movements.
A Message from Yumiko: “I call my dance approach (or my body work) “Body Resonance.”
The world, including our body and soul, consists of vibrational waves that create constant resonances like echoes. When we tune our body to a certain frequency, we consequently get a resonance, and according to the frequency, we get different resonances. In order for this to happen, we need to first get rid of unnecessary tension.
Butoh (dance) for me activates divergent body energies that are usually not seen or permitted in our daily life. In other words, as our body is a receptacle of time, we can evoke its forgotten memories through dance.
Butoh has the intensity to trigger that process, because it creates heat through friction and cold through stillness. The transformations and concentrations of dancing break up the eggshell of form, melt down our armor of ego, as our stiff cells and sealed memories float in the primal liquid of time. Through a dialogue with our body, we learn not how to move, but to be moved. Consequently we realize that we are a part of the Universal, the wholeness.
My workshop, hopefully, can offer a help to enjoy that transformative /transcendental process of our entire presence.”
Contact sara@saratonin.com if you have questions about this workshop.
Yumiko Yoshioka Dancer, choreographer, teacher, art director.
Yumiko Yoshioka is a Japanese Butoh dancer and choreographer from Tokyo. Since 1988 she has been based in Germany. Yumiko is a former member of Ariadone, the first female Butoh company, which was founded by Ko Murobushi and Carlotta Ikeda in 1974. In 1978, she performed with Ko and Carolotta in Paris, LE DERNIER EDEN – PORTE DE L’AU-DELA, the very first Butoh performance to be presented in a public theatre outside Japan. In 1988 she met Minako Seki and delta RA’i in Berlin, with whom she founded tatoeba THÉÂTRE DANCE GROTESQUE. This experience, along with work with the Butoh dancer Kim-Itoh, encouraged Yumiko to start to unfold her own personal style of dancing and choreography.
In 1989 she also started to develop and teach her own form of bodywork. The approach became a pillar of her career as a reflection of her profound understanding of the importance of deepening consciousness of the body, not only in order to dance and express, but also to illuminate our daily life, opening ourselves to the deeper layers of our inner world and rediscovering a subtle beauty in each moment. The strength of this perception led her to create her own method of bodywork, called “Body Resonance”
Mitsu Salmon will lead a Butoh, Japanese contemporary dance, workshop. We will work with guided imagery, movement and structured improvisation. The workshop draws from aspects and the trainings of Butoh and interweaves them with visions and textures of the desert from cacti to fission. The class will start with Noguchi exercises, which foster an experience of the body as water with the goal of encountering and releasing the body. Once our bodies and imaginations are opened, we will go into movement prompts. We will roll around in the sand, embody turtles and eat sour plums. Our bodies will become water seeping into cracks of rocks and ice creating ancient land formations. We will pull from imagery connected to animism, geology and physics. Students are welcome to modify exercises based on their comfort and inventiveness. The series works well together but also fine do drop-in. All levels welcome and please wear comfortable clothing.
Week 1
In week one, we will have a quick introduction to Butoh and Noguchi, looking at the history of the dance form and learning warm-ups. From there we will imagine rolling through various landscapes such as desert, ice and rock to embody land formations. We will explore various energies as connected to sensation and movement such as electric, nuclear and fission. We will then be introduced to brush walking (suri ashi), a meditative form of traditional butoh walking.
Week 2
In week two, we will start off again with the Noguchi warm-up. Looking at the writing of Kazuo Ohno, one of the founders of Butoh, we will dive into plant (desert and other) improvisation. We will explore ideas of ancestors and the environment. We will then be guided through layered imagery starting with a grandma eating plums to becoming a turtle.
Week 3
In week three, we will build upon the Noguchi warm up. We will then work with Kazuo Ohno prompt connected to family, the desert landscape and rain. We will then review brush walking. From there we will look at explosive energy and physical and emotional release.
Week 4
In week three, we will build about the Noguchi warm-up. I will then introduce examples and ideas of mythical creatures. From there we will be guided through one’s own imagery of mythical creatures. There creatures will then interact with one another whether through battle, dance or dream.
Bob Lyness on a pile of found rope garbage hauled from the sea, July 4, 2018 in Honolulu, Hawaii Photo by Sara Zalek
An introduction. Bob’s Compilation is a solid list for anyone looking to tap into sensitivity trainings of mind body awareness from a lineage of Butoh. Bob has a twenty year plus record of attending workshops and participating in performances with many of Butoh’s legendary masters. Both formal and informal techniques originate from Japanese masters, and have adapted and regenerated into European descendants, and folded back into it’s roots, which are a collage of Japanese, African, European, and American art, dance and performance styles of the early twentieth century. Butoh tends to have a murky water flavor, teaming with variation, nuance, and multiplicity. In our estimation, this dance form is the endless trickster, it becomes a ritual dance of the present, to mark a specific time and place, to be shared by all humans, including immigrants, refugees, otherly abled, and worldwide outsider artists seeking to express through the body, all of its vivid dimension. TransfoRMiNg, unLeaRNINg, DisCoVERIng, Resilience TraiNING. And More. All classes are suggested donation. Please do be aware that all of these artists support themselves by sharing their accumulated knowledge online. If you find any error or wish to add classes to this list, please reach out and let us know, we can update and revise as we go. (butohchicago@gmail.com)
Tuesday: 4-5:30am US eastern time Yumi Umiumare‘s butoh class from Melbourne, Australia She also operates on a suggested pay-what-you-can donation basis Register ahead of time with Yumi and she’ll add you to the class. Email Yumi, and she’ll send you the link: https://www.yumi.com.au/contact
1pm to 3pm US eastern time: Maureen Fleming‘s Metamorphosis class (from upstate NY). Butoh inspired, involves the use of elastic bands (that you can buy from Maureen) for the first half of the class, which is largely stretching and range of motion exercises, and the second half is learning a series of five Metamorphoses, which are sort of poetic moving poses that transition from one into the other. $100 for full series of 8 classes (twice a week). If you take Maureen’s class, you will want to get the elastic band set from them (it’s an excellent exercise tool) at this link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/maureen-fleming-metamorphosis-series-tickets-103296628998
Thursday: 1pm to 3pm US eastern time: Maureen Flemings class (see description above from Tuesday) 1:30 to 3pm US eastern time: Yokko’s butoh and movement class on Instagram (from NYC). Yokko combines butoh and physical theater. https://www.instagram.com/p/CBiX1VVHZeR/ Yokko also recently posted a beautiful butoh solo dance about isolation in NYC during the lockdown (she’s left her apartment one time in 7 weeks). Here’s the link: https://www.facebook.com/teatroespace/videos/719136498830732/UzpfSTE0MjAwMjE2NDQ5MTg3OTI6MjY4ODUyMDYyODA2ODg4MQ/ The weekly classes are on a donation basis to Yokko’s butoh theater company, Ren Gyo Soh
Yumiko Yoshioka, Before the Dawn, 2002. Photos by: Photos: Giuseppe Frusteri, Ricardo Ramírez Arriola, Elena Bennati
Belonging to a third generation of Butoh artists, Yumiko has developed a personal style of bodywork called Body Resonance, which integrates Butoh practice with features of Noguchi Taiso gymnastics and various other Asian training methods to help prepare the body to receive and transmit dance and inspirations.
July 10-12
Butoh/Curios/Chi hosts 3 days of Body Resonance On Zoom (listed below in US Central Time)
Earthdance hosts 3 days of Body Resonance On Zoom (these times in Central Daylight Time): Friday 11–12pm & 12:30–1:30pm Saturday 11–12pm & 12:30–1:30pm Sunday 11–12pm & 12:30–1:30pm More information and registration here.
May 30-31
WITD hosts 2 days of Body Resonance On Zoom (these times in Central Daylight Time): Saturday & Sunday 12-1:30pm More information and registration link here.
May 8 – 10
Bob Lyness from Hawaii will host a class especially for those in that part of the world! 5:00 – 6:30pm Hawaii time 10:00-11:00pm Chicago time Register here or contact : Bob Lynness @rhb11@hotmail.com
Yumiko’s words: “Body Resonance starts from the idea that the world, including our body and soul, consists of vibrational waves that create constant resonances like echoes. When we tune our body to that frequency, we receive images, feelings and sensations accordingly. For this to happen, we need first to shake off unnecessary tension. In effect, we make a white canvas of our body to paint new colour on it. I teach this as neutralization, encouraging a close-to-zero state, scouring off rust and polishing antenna to catch waves from profound layers of the body. The transformations and concentrations of dancing break up the eggshell of form. They melt down the armour of our ego, allowing resonant memories to emerge from our cells that are floating in the primal liquid of time.”
Yumiko Yoshioka: dancer, choreographer, teacher, art director is a Japanese Butoh dancer and choreographer originally from Tokyo. Since 1988 she has been based in Berlin. Yumiko was a former member of Ariadone in 1974, the first female Butoh company, founded by Carlotta Ikeda and Ko Murobushi. In 1978, she performed with Carlotta and Ko in Paris ”Le Dernier Eden- Porte de L’Au-Dela,“ the very first Butoh performance to be presented in a public theatre outside Japan. In 1988 she founded tatoeba THÉÂTRE DANCE GROTESQUE with Minako Seki and delta RA’i in Berlin (1988–1996). Between 1995–2015 she was a core member of TEN PEN CHii art labor, an interdisciplinary and experimental art formation, as a dancer and a choreographer along with JoaXhim Manger (visual artist) and Zam Johnson (composer and musician). Since 1995 she has also set up various collaborative projects across Europe such as “eX…it!, Dance eXchange Festival” at Schloss Bröllin in Germany, dance projects with Gest-Azione, with Annalisa Maggiani from Italy, and dance creations with Rena Konstantaki from Greece. Many other collaborations with international artists and dancers encouraged Yumiko to unfold her own personal style of dancing and choreography. www.yumiko-yoshioka.com
Part 6 – The Power of Imagination Series, by Minako Seki
10-11-12 of July 2020
4pm (Madrid-Paris-Berlin) 70 minutes
What is the program ? 10. July 2020 Seaweed
11. July 2020 All body as a bird’s neck
12. July 2020 Snakes and their muscles
This workshop is open to every body, from 8 to 88 years old, who likes to dance with a playful heart! You don’t need to have participated in the past workshops to join us!
With sadness, and with a terrific need to respond in some way. Not knowing words, or combinations of words for these feelings, clearly in transition, as we are.
The much planned for Butoh Between Festival for May 2020 has been cancelled. All programming at OuterSpace is also cancelled until further notice. Our international artists have stopped travel plans. We are going dark so that we may transform, to find our present in the purpose of community and survival. We will communicate as we can, and urge you to share in ways that nurture generosity and open heartedness toward every one of us.
Wishing you health & sanity during a most surreal time.
We encourage each other to support feeding and housing our local communities. To remain engaged, and responsive to each situation. To trust that our body/mind will know how to respond. To cultivate self practice, mindfulness, and respect for all beings.
“Like what we know of the virus so far, we are uncommitted to anything particular. We mutate with the times.”
Proud to be a top pick in May ❤ Chicago, US. Calling all Butoh enthusiasts and all beautiful weirdos celebrate with us, in all the ways. See you soon! For a full list of events see : butohchicago.com
New city stage dance-top-5-may-2019/
#1 Butoh Non Festival (various venues) Workshops and performances in the Japanese avant-garde discipline with local and visiting artists take place at OuterSpace Studios, the International Museum of Surgical Science and No Nation Tangential Unspace Gallery throughout May. Through May 31
“Butoh brings a sense of finding something unique from deep inside each individual, not in beauty but based on real human experience, to share with audience,” said Zalek. “To me, Butoh offers a deepening sense of familiarity with human existence.”
September 1, 2, 8, 9, 15, and 16, 2018 Saturdays & Sundays 5-7pm
Where: Beginning at Caracol Gathering Space (located south of McCormick Place Bird Sanctuary, by the lakefront at 2400 S. Lake Shore Dr.)
Ending at La Ronda Parakata Gathering Space (south of the 31st St. Harbor, around 3300 S. Lake Shore Dr.)
Open the visceral door of your body, move within a flock. Join award-winning choreographer and master teacher Nejla Yatkin to explore the interaction between people, their movement, and the natural environment through this series of unique movement workshops on Saturday and Sunday afternoons in August. Participants will be guided through a process harnessing multiple practices including; Reiki, Feldenkrais, physical theater exercises, and contemporary dance. The conference will transform the way we experience ourselves through movement.
Workshop participants will perform in Conference Of The Birds, a series of six site-specific, interactive performances presented on Saturdays and Sundays in September in the Burnham Wildlife Corridor on Chicago’s lakefront. During each performance, workshop participants will guide an audience in an interactive and participatory movement practice inspired by bird flocking behavior with the goal of transforming audience self perceptions, their views of one another, and to move through an environment in new and unexpected ways.
My inspiration: “Everything in life moves. The human body is designed to engage with the environment through movement. Throughout a lifetime of choreographing, teaching, and dancing around the globe, I have learned how beneficial dance is to human development. Dance sharpens the senses, enhances social intelligence, challenges the body and mind and consequently reinvigorates our cognitive, physical and social development. In this workshop we will explore what moves people and how the collective energy inspires people to move.” –Nejla Yatkin
About: Nejla Yatkin Award-winning and critically acclaimed choreographer and dancer Nejla Yatkin is a recent Drama Desk Award Nominee, Chita Rivera Nominee for Outstanding Choreography, 3Arts Awardee, and Princess Grace Choreography award fellow. Nejla hails from Germany, bringing a luminous and transcultural perspective to her creations. Her focus is regularly drawn to the role that memory and history serve in constructing identity, causing and resolving conflict, and the possibility of transforming cultural tensions into deep, authentic moments of human connection.
Conference Of The Birds by Nejla Y. Yatkin is presented as part of the Chicago Park District’s Night Out in the Parks series, supported by Mayor Rahm Emanuel. Arts programming in neighborhoods across the city advances the goals of the Chicago Park District and the Chicago Cultural Plan. Now in its sixth year, the 2018 Night Out in the Parks series will host over 1,000 cultural events and programs at more than 250 neighborhood parks throughout the city, making community parks a safe haven and hubs of activity. Projects will vary from traditional performances and concerts, to movies, peace rallies, community workshops, nature based programs, dance pieces, festivals, and more. The Chicago Park District has partnered with more than 100 arts and community organizations to expand and produce this successful initiative. Conference of the Birds is also supported, in part, by Contratiempo, The Jay Pritzker Foundation, and the McClelland Foundation.
️] pronounced “Hypothetical Star”: M_m<M and nulltopia @mmmtvdotnet
Butoh Curious Chi 