Body Resonance with Yumiko Yoshioka
May 4-7, 2023
Thursday – Sunday
(in person only)
Thurs & Friday 6-9pm;
Saturday 1-5pm;
Sunday 3-7pm.
at Color Club, 4146 N Elston Ave, Chicago
Tickets vary $50-$225. Various packages available, Earlybird tickets are discounted until April 21. This workshop does build every day and is best with complete immersion. However, our lives and schedules may not allow for that, so come to as many days as you can. We welcome all curious bodies! If there are any access needs questions you have, please contact sara@saratonin.com for details. Volunteer discounts available.
The body as a receptacle of time.
A dance of metamorphosis inevitably appears.
The main focus of this workshop is a conscious research in the unification of our body/mind/soul, so that we can deeply enjoy the intrinsic process of metamorphosis through the spirit of dance. Through a continuous exploration of our past collective memories, we can strike a vein of abundant creative resources, enriching the essence of our life.
Body resonance is a key to opening up the doors of an ever-changing world inside and outside ourselves, which helps the body to unfold its secrets, holding them up until they shine and tremble. Everything is in resonance with each other. Through a dialogue with our body, we can learn to be moved by inner and outer forces, thus realizing we are a part of the Universe.
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
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.
Take a trip on the way back machine to Wednesday, April 25, 2018
It feels like forever ago….the last time they were here. Miguel and Yumiko, and together with Links Hall we presented: 100 Light Years of Solitude
Following Yumiko’s acclaimed solo “Before the Dawn”, this is the second part of her trilogy “From 1 to 100”. 100 Light Years of Solitude is inspired by Garcia Marquez’s “One Hundred Years of Solitude” to explore a state of solitude Yumiko dances the life of a unique creature, born on a planet 100 light years away from ours. Imagining that this creature is the only one of its species on that planet, it enjoys unfolding its life until it realizes its destiny… to exist in solitude. Yumiko says, “In my childhood, I was always fascinated by the imaginary creatures and monsters of fairy tales. Butoh, a dance of metamorphosis, helps me to explore this imaginary world, and make something invisible visible.”
Co-direction – Miguel Camarero
Costume – Pablo Alarcon
Light design/ technical direction – Spiros Paterakis
Music composition – Tomas Tello/ Zam Johnson
Read Scapi Mag’s online review by Danielle Levsky. Bridge Dance Festival on April 25, 2018 at Links Hall in Chicago.
Yumiko Yoshioka
Dancer, choreographer, teacher, art director
Born in Tokyo, residing in Germany since 1988
Thanks to our partners for helping to make it happen ❤
Butoh Curious Chi 