Butoh residential workshop 2008

With Yumi UmiumareButoh Workshop The aim of this workshop on the Dee River, Yarra Valley was to develop body awareness and expression through a response to landscape. The lush landscape in Yarra Valley allows participants to move between bush land, hills, open fields and river, opening up the senses to color, texture, sound and form. Over the weekend, Yumi will introduce various methods of Butoh, Body Awareness and Consciousness of Well-being with various Japanese techniques. Butoh - Originating in Japan out of the turbulent protest culture of the early 1960's, Butoh has a literal translation of BU - dance TOH - stomping. Earlier named Ankoku Butoh (the Dance of Darkness), it is one of the major developments in contemporary dance in the latter half of the twentieth century.

"Butoh belongs to life and death. It is a realization of the distance between a human being and the unknown. It also represents man’s struggle to overcome the distance between himself and the material world. Butoh dancers’ bodies are like a cup filled to overflowing, one which cannot take one more drop of liquid – the body enters a state of perfect balance." USHIO AMAGATSU, Sankaijuku