April 2, 12-3pm. One Day Only Workshop at Columbia Dance Center
This three hour workshop and conversation delves into contemporary Butoh thought and artistic practice. Visiting Butoh dancer and scholar Michael Sakamoto leads a two hour movement workshop followed by a conversation with Columbia Dance Center faculty and dancer Darrell Jones to enlighten us on their individual approaches to presenting Butoh within contemporary performance practice. Come prepared to move and reflect. All levels welcome! RSVP for this free workshop ASAP. Class size is limited to 24.
Michael Sakamoto is an interdisciplinary artist and scholar active in dance, theatre, performance, media and photography. His solo, ensemble and visual works have been presented in 14 countries throughout Asia, Europe and North America.
Currently touring “Flash,” a butoh/hip-hop duet with Rennie Harris, Michael is also developing “blind spot,” an intermedia performance and book project integrating discourses around the body, media imagery and intellectual property, and “Soil,” a dance theater trio with performers from Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam/USA. Michael’s research and performance interests include contemporary imaginings of the butoh-based “body in crisis,” corporeal and mediated embodiments of self-reflection and social resistance, and performing the cultural commons and cultural sustainability. From 1994-2000, he was also a featured soloist in the Rachel Rosenthal Company.
Michael holds an MFA in Dance and PhD in Culture and Performance from UCLA, is former Co-Director of Goddard College’s MFA in Interdisciplinary Arts Program and currently serves as Assistant Professor in Dance at the University of Iowa.
Darrell Jones has performed in the United States and abroad with a variety of choreographers and companies such as Bebe Miller, Urban Bush Women, Ronald K. Brown, Min Tanaka and Ralph Lemon.
Along with performing Darrell continues to choreograph and teach. He has collaborated with other choreographers (Paige Cunningham, Lisa Gonzales, Damon Green, Angie Hauser, JSun Howard, Kirstie Simpson, Jeremy Wade), writers (Cheryl Boyce-Taylor), musicians (Jessie Mano, Brian Schuler, Justin Mitchell) and designers (Mawish Syed) in dance films, documentations and interactive multimedia installations. In addition to his collaborative work he continues to work in solo forms and has choreographed for professional and student ensembles (The Seldoms, University of Colorado, Univeristy of Illinois).
Darrell has received choreographic fellowships from MANCC, CDF (Chicago Dancemakers Forum) and is a two time Bessie award recipient for his collabrative work with Bebe Miller Company and his most recent research in (e)feminized ritual performance.
Darrell has also taught workshops and master classes in dance technique and improvisational processes throughout the United States and in other countries such as South Africa, UK, and South Korea. Darrell is presently a tenured faculty member at at The Dance Center of Columbia College in Chicago where he teaches classes in dance techniqe, performance and improvisational practices. His classes are informed by his training and studies in a variety of contemporary dance techniques and Traditional Dance forms.
To truly awaken the body is a physical, emotional, mental and spiritual process. Every Butoh Ritual Mexicano workshop involves high-impact aerobic training, active meditation, and guided improvisation, all embraced within a sense of communal ritual. The collective physical training consists of stretching, shaking, jumping, low-level groundwork, balancing, partnering, weight sharing, impulse exchange, bodywork, bioenergetics, breath expansion, and transpersonal communication. Active meditation exercises are introduced to quiet the mind and awaken orig
The Substitute
Butoh Curious Chi 