BUTOH TRANSFORMATION EXERCISES: Compiled and conceived by Tanya Calamoneri

Extracted from Scene 2011-12 March Issue 3

Butoh transformation exercises
Compiled and conceived by Tanya Calamoneri
The following exercises were developed for
ISTA master classes taught in New York in June and
October 2011. They are informed and inspired
by my own training with butoh masters such as
Murobushi Ko, Waguri Yukio, Seki Minako, SU-
EN, and Shinichi Koga, whose company inkBoat I
performed with from 2000-03.
These imagery exercises can be applied to
performer training to teach students the following
key concepts:
Manipulation of space: Working with the
body in ways that change everyday space,
working beyond ones own kinesphere,
working beyond ones singular perspective
and becoming part of the space;
Manipulation of time: Condensing and
stretching time beyond daily time, working
with the rhythm of images;
Living the experience: Allowing images to
change the performers body, space, and time;
Transformation: Following a journey
through images, allowing the image to dance
instead of ones idea of the image.
There is no right way that any of these
images should be performed. In fact they should
differ on each student as everyones mind-
body experience is unique. However, there is
a proper technique, which is to become the
image. In other words, one should work toward
transcending personality and ego-consciousness,
and move as if one simply is the image. Students
should be encouraged to engage full in the image
exploration with their whole being, to allow it to
drive the improvisation, so that they might surprise
themselves with new sensations and experiences.
I find it is often best to give them a brief overview
of the sequence so they recognize the words I
am saying while deep in an improvisation, but to
mostly live-direct their experience with many rich
details so they are already in doing mode, rather
than thinking mode.
Generally I divide classes in half so everyone
has a chance to do and also to watch, and then
we discuss their experiences after both groups
have experienced the image improvisation. I
remind them that they are not performing for one
another, but rather allowing us to watch them
research.
Transformation guided image
improvisation multiple states: metal
theme
(photo of Ko Murobushi)
www.ista.co.uk
Begin with a solid form of metal. Make a shape
and fill it with the hardness of steel. Everything
is metal, including your arms, legs, spine, neck,
and face. You try to move but cannot. Gradually
discover how this metal creature moves. Explore
very tiny rotations in the joints that allow you
change your shape. Be very specific about your
movements. Imagine these rotations moving
as gears. Travel in space exploring your unique
mechanism. Play with magnitude and time (short
long rotations). Support your movement with
breath and/or sound.
(allow 2-5 minutes for improvisation and discovery)
Imagine nerves connecting the joints of
your metal body, moving like electrical currents
throughout your body, connecting the sequences
between your joints. Transform your entire body
with this image, down to the spaces between
your fingers, behind your ears, the back of your
knees, and under your feet. Take your time. If
you get stuck or drop out, go back to stillness
and reconnect with the mental image, sense its
vibrations, resonance, and movement qualities.
Allow yourself to be moved by these energies.
(allow 2-5 minutes for improvisation and discovery)
Your electrical currents short circuit and catch
fire. Sparks fly as explosions violently change your
form.
(allow 1-2 minutes for improvisation and discovery)
The heat intensifies and your metal begins to
boil and melt. You become quick sliver (like in
Terminator).
(allow 2-3 minutes for improvisation and discovery)
Recognizable shapes emerge from the
quicksilver first a foot, then a hand, then a head
with no facial features. Gather these randomly
appearing pieces into a new creature with a
different form than your first metal creature.
(A little more quickly this time) go through the
process of learning how the creature functions
and travels in space explore joints as gears and
nerves/electrical current connecting your body,
making sequenced movement more fluid.
(allow 1-2 minutes for improvisation and discovery)
Your new metal creature is equipped with
magnetic light beams, shining from tiny openings
in your hands, wrists, eyes, chest, belly button,
knees, tail, etc. Use them to help you change
shape and travel in the space. Notice other
metal creatures in the space and experiment with
connecting with them energetically, and moving
throughout the space. Avoid developing a human
narrative at this point - Follow the images and
sensations where they take you. You may be
pulled away from one connection by another
allow these interruptions to happen and follow
where it leads you.
(allow 1-3 minutes for improvisation and discovery)
Your light beam system gets jammed and you
freeze in an extended form. You have to revert
to your back up system of nerves/wires and gears
to travel. Gradually these systems begin to rust.
The gears stick together and your whole body
become rust.
(allow 1-2 minutes for improvisation and discovery)
Your rust body completely disintegrates and
turns to dust. Sometimes large chunks of metal
break off and you collapse, bit by bit. Eventually
your whole body settles into a pile of red dust.
The wind comes and blows your dust across the
landscape.
(allow 1-2 minutes for improvisation and discovery)
Transformation guided image improvisation
multiple states: water theme
Begin with wave patterns, travelling up and
down from bottom of feet, through legs, pelvis,
and spine to top of head. Travel in space with this
pattern. Shift the orientation of the pattern so
that it travels in diagonal spirals through the body,
moving in and out of floor, and in all directions
in space. Play with magnitude, time and effort
quality. Support your movement with breath.
(allow 5-10 minutes for improvisation and discovery)
Imagine waves crashing on the shore of a lake
or ocean. Using wave patterns, transform your
entire body into this image, down to the spaces
between your fingers, behind your ears, the back
of your knees, and under your feet. Take your
time. If you get stuck or drop out, go back to
stillness and reconnect with the mental image,
sense its vibrations, resonance, and movement
qualities. Allow yourself to be moved by these
energies.
(allow 3-5 minutes for improvisation and discovery)
You come to a deep place in your body of
water, a very cold place. Your water gets thick
and heavy, slowly freezes, and turns to ice.
(allow 1-2 minutes for improvisation and discovery)
The sun shines on your ice body, slowly
melting it. Sense yourself melting molecule by
molecule. Every once in awhile, chunks of ice
might break off.
(allow 1-2 minutes for improvisation and discovery)
Find yourself on the edge of your ocean or
lake, where it turns into a great river. Follow
the river as it flows into a stream, then a brook,
moving over rocks and muddy earth.
(allow 1-2 minutes for improvisation and discovery)
You pass over hot, volcanic earth and
become a boiling, bubbling hot spring. Tiny
bubbles bump against each other as they fight to
get to the surface. Move very fast and very tiny
on the inside. Sense the bubbles moving up your
body gradually, increasing the pressure inside you.
(allow 1 minute for improvisation and discovery)
Once you reach the surface, you transform to
hot steam. Your whole body becomes steam and
floats above the surface of the earth.
(allow 1-2 minutes for improvisation and discovery)
You settle into a pool of water and cool off.
It begins to rain. Sense the raindrops on your
surface.
(allow 1-2 minutes for improvisation and
discovery)
The pool/puddle overflows until it becomes
the lake/ocean again. The rain stops, the sun
Scene | Issue 3 | 2011-12 March 51
shines. The breeze causes ripples in the water.
Sense the pull of the tide. Move with it. Come
to stillness. Notice the small waves travelling
deep within your body.
(allow 1 minute for improvisation and discovery)
Solo single state image transformation
exercises
Note: its nice to have a long time to explore
these transformations, and then repeat them in a
shorter time as more of a dance that can be used
in a choreography.
Molting snake (5-15 min)
Begin by imagining your skin peeling
after a sunburn. You dont need to mime the
action - imagine someone or something else
slowly peeling away thin layers of your skin,
going deeper and deeper until you are peeling
the muscles away from the bones. Take your
time and progress randomly throughout the
body it doesnt need to be one sequential
action. Peeling one layer of skin may lead to
sensation somewhere else on the body follow
the sensations and explore the movement as
you sense it (dont think through it logically).
Incorporate the flesh of the face into the
experience - avoid commenting on your
condition with facial expression and instead simply
experience the sensations. Allow the dance
to change your orientation to gravity explore
levels, disrupt your central axis (i.e. normally your
head is on top of your shoulders), and play with
timing. Keep a sense of a lighter, faster, sleeker
52 Issue 3 | 2011-12 March | Scene
being emerging, and explore how that creature
moves through space.
Bug-eaten leaf (5-15 min)
Begin in a shape that feels like a leaf you are
familiar with (i.e. poplar = long elliptical, Canadian
maple = ~ a wilted DiVinci man). Sense your
texture, the water, chlorophyll, and other plant
matter coursing through your leaf veins. Sense
the integrity of that structure. Imagine a single
caterpillar crawling along your surface, the
vibrations its little feet make as it walks, and
its little mouth starting to munch. Allow the
image and sensations to change your structure.
Gradually add more and more caterpillars, and
more and more munching, eating up all the juicy
plant food, until you are just a shell of cellulose
plant fibre that can be blown away in the wind.
Blooming flower (5-15 min)
happening in their structures and allow yourself to
Begin as a seed, buried deep underground
and hibernating during winter. Imagine the snow
on the surface of the ground above you, and
sense the hard protectiveness of the shell. Deep
inside your centre, sense a little light/life force.
Magnify that until it becomes a shoot that breaks
through the seed, which takes significant effort.
Sense the warmth of the sun on the earths
surface, and push up through the earth toward
the sun, while at the same time growing roots
down into the earth. Sense the difference in air
quality as you burst through the surface of the
earth. Keep growing your plant shoot, develop
leaves, and then a tiny bud. Opening the bud
is a similar process to opening the seed, it takes
significant effort and a build up of inner life force.
As the bud starts to blossom, sense the weight
and moisture of the petals, the fragrance and
maybe even colour of your flower. Dont worry
about identifying it as a specific flower. Work
from sensation and develop specifics as you
experience them. You may end up with a hybrid
flower, which is fine. Keep opening the flower,
and follow the image through until the sun dries
and withers the petals, and they crumple and turn
to dust. The sun dries the whole plant out, and
the whole thing turns back to dust in the earth,
where you can gather your energy into a seed
and begin again if you wish. Or you can follow
the process through several blossoms and just
end with blossoms.
Group Compositions
Start upstage right as a group with a relatively
small sense of space, and move on the diagonal to
downstage left into a vast sense of space. Sense
the transitions in the landscape and let them effect
your movement.
Snakes start in a pond, maybe under some
leaves, move out into the sun, which dries
your skin and you begin to molt, keep
travelling through landscapes until you reach a
vast desert.
Flowers start as buds and bloom, uproot and
travel through your green landscape getting
bigger as you go. End up in a cathedral,
mosque, or other similarly vast and vaguely
spiritual structure where you settle on an
altar (a mountain top can be a spiritually vast
place too if you dont want to use a religious
reference).
Leaves start in a forest, get eaten by
caterpillars until you are nothing but the plant
fiber shell, which is then blown along the
landscape until it reaches a high mountain top.
Group single state image transformation
exercises
Seaweed (3-15 min)
You are seaweed rooted on the ocean floor.
Sense your thinness and slippery surface. Feel your
plant fibre structure being moved by the water.
Sense the space around you and other seaweed
plants around you. Connect to them through the
current of the water. Sense the delicacy of waves
be effected by it. The ripples are travelling through
water so it takes longer than sound waves or wind
there is a slowed down, muted, underwater
quality to the impulses you receive. Keep at least
half of your awareness on your own experience
as well, so that you are also sending information
as much as you are receiving it. Imagine the
impulses coming from outside you a fish or a
boat swimming by, a bird landing on the surface of
the water, the tide pulling you. You dont have to
make anything happen if you tune in to the image
its already happening. Then gradually uproot your
plant and explore this journey using the entire
space, simply allowing yourself to be moved by the
currents in the water.
Building Crumbling (3 min - as slowly as
you like)
As a group, form a solid building with right
angles (without touching but very close is best).
Rockettes, which often performs in New Yorks club scene. Many performers filtered in and
Stretch your awareness out to your collective edges
and sense the strength of the entire structure. Little
by little an earthquake rumbles beneath your feet,
shaking the foundation. Sense the cracks in the
entire structure and the domino effect they have in
your own portion of the building. Work with very
small impulses. Sometimes chunks of the building fall
off. Little by little the entire structure crumbles and
falls to the ground.
glacier (5 min as slowly as you like)
Start up/midstage centre and move
downstage centre. As a group, you are a glacier.
Your whole body is ice stiff, cold, solid, brittle.
Your eyes are ice. Between your bodies is ice.
Move as one unit very slowly forward, with the
tension of a glacier moving (not easily). Small
cracks and fissures may gradually separate you.
After a while, you reach the edge of land and
large chunks break off the glacier until each of you
is a floating iceberg.
www.ista.co.uk
The street where I live
Butoh in New York
Excerpted from Butoh in New York and San Francisco to be published in Latvia in 2013 in
English and Latvian, in an edited volume by Simona Orinska.
Butoh dance is a post-modern dance-theater form that began in Tokyo in the late 1950s,
instigated by founders Tatsumi Hijikata and Ohno Kazuo. It has since become a global
diaspora, centered in many urban locales and intentional communities throughout the world.
Each site has its own unique flavor, influenced by the history of its development and the artists
who helped establish that community.
In New York, Eiko and Koma first performed their version of butoh white dance,
which they called it to distinguish it from Hijikatas dance of darkness in 1976, presented by
the Japan Society. The couple studied with Ohno Kazuo in Japan, Mary Wigman student Manja
Chmiel in Germany and Lucas Hoving (Jose Limon, Martha Graham, Doris Humphrey, and
others) in the Netherlands. The pair has developed their own style that they call delicious
movement, and often present installation-like performances over several hours. They have
collaborated with such numerous acclaimed artists as Anna Halprin and Kronos Quartet. The
couple often tackles complex and sensitive themes, such as their collaboration with Cambodian
painters presented in Cambodia and New York, and Offering, a mourning ritual presented near
Ground Zero in New York. The duet has grown in prominence over the years, receiving such
esteemed awards as two New York Bessies, and Guggenheim and MacArthur fellowships.
Poppo Shiraishi, a student of butoh dancer Kunisaki Kamiryo, first infused butoh into the
New York avant-garde scene when he founded Poppo and the GoGo Boys in 1979 and began
presenting ritualistic, punk, site-specific work in the East Village. He was known for daring,
controversial work, including jumping on cars and dancing with toilets. Several members of
the GoGo Boys went on to form their own companies, including long-time principal dancer
Celeste Hastings who has developed a rich solo career and in 2000 founded the Butoh
out of Poppos GoGo Boys, including Zack Fuller, who has performed internationally and also
worked extensively with Tanaka Min, and Sara Baird and Susan Lamberth, who went on to
form Anemone Dance, which presented work in New York from 2002 to 2007.
New Yorks formal introduction to butoh on the stage came with Ohno Kazuos
performance of Admiring La Argentina and My Mother at La Mama in 1981, invited by visionary
producer Ellen Stewart. Following this, Dairakurakan performed Sea Dappled Horse in 1982
at the American Dance Festival, where many New York-based dancers train and audiences
attend performances. American audiences everywhere became increasingly aware of butoh
with Sankai Jukus performance at the LA Olympics in 1984. Ohno returned to New York
in 1985 with performances of Admiring La Argentina and Dead Sea at Joyce Theaters Japan
Series. On this trip, Ohno granted an interview to Richard Schechner, one of the primary
founders of the performance studies field and the impetus behind the Performance Studies
Department at New York University. Schechner published the interview entitled Kazuo Ohno
Doesnt Commute in The Drama Review in Summer 1986, which was accompanied by a
host of other articles on Ohno, Tanaka Min, Kuniyoshi Kazukos Butoh Chronology: 1959-
1984, and Bonnie Sue Steins Twenty Years Ago We Were Dirty Crazy and Mad, to which
the ironic punchline is, and now we have a passport. Butoh had reached a new level of
legitimacy, including academic study and high art status with performances at increasingly high
profile venues, including Dairakurakans 1987 performance of The Five Rings at City Center and
Ohnos 1988 invitation to present Water Lilies at Asia Society.
In the 1990s, Maureen Fleming emerged as a prominent New York-based butoh master.
She performed a duet with Ohno Yoshito in 1991 at La Mama, and subsequently became a La
Mama artist in residence in 1994. Fleming was a long-time student of Ohno Kazuo, and had
performed with Yoshito, Tanaka Min, and Kasai Akira. She currently teaches in the Experimental
Theater Wing at New York University and tours internationally.
Takenouchi Atsushi has been an important figure in the New York community as well,
offering many workshops upstate and in nature. Many dancers trained with him in the 1990s,
after which point he became more involved in Japan and Europe. Takenouchi worked with
Hijikata briefly through Hoppo-Butoh-ha in Hoikkado in 1980, and then extensively with the
Ohnos from 1996-99 in Japan.
Ohno returned to the United States in 1993, touring to Los Angeles, Seattle, Omaha,
Kansas City, Minneapolis, and New York. He returned to New York again in 1996 with a
performance of My Mother, and his final New York performance in 1999, Requiem for the 20th
Century. In 2007, Japan Society hosted a three-week marathon of performances celebrating
Ohno Kazuos 100th Birthday. He has been one of the most significant influences on the New
York butoh community, helping to build an audience with his numerous performances and also
through several of his important students who helped to found this community.
In the Fall of 2003, I moved to New York City, where I arrived just in time for the first
New York Butoh Festival, produced by CAVE co-directors Ximena Garnica and Shige Moriya
and additional producers Jeff Janisheski, Zachary Model, and Juan Merchan. This group had
studied together with Takenouchi Atsushi and Diego Pion, and had been organizing smaller
one-off butoh workshops and events in New York since 2000. Janisheski had also studied
in Japan with the Ohnos and Waguri Yukio. The festival launched a new level of visibility
Scene | Issue 3 | 2011-12 March 53
 SILENT
and funding for butoh in New York, partnering with Japan
Society and receiving support from the Rockefeller Multi-Arts
Production Fund, among other institutions. The first festival
featured Waguri Yukio (Tokyo), SU-EN (Sweden former
student of Ashikawa Yoko and member of Gnome), Shinonome

(Tokyo), Joan Laage (Seattle), Shinichi Koga (San Francisco),
and Zack Fuller (New York). After three biennial festivals with
extensive performance, lecture, film screenings, and workshops
in 2003, 2005, and 2007, the organizers transitioned the format
into its current NY Butoh-kan model, focusing on ongoing
workshops with more than 18 different teachers, and training
the next generation of dancers (340 unique students to date).
They continue to co-produce performances for visiting masters
with partner organizations such as Dance New Amsterdam,
though not on the scale of the earlier festivals. They have
facilitated opportunities for local dancers to perform in the
works of visiting butoh masters, including Kasai Akira (Butoh
America presented by Japan Society), Murobushi Ko (Furnace
presented at Dixon Place), and Waguri Yukio (Labyrinth of Body
presented at CAVE).
New York being the large arts community that it is, there
are other artists and producers that present various workshops
and performances with butoh masters. These include French-
born butoh dancer Vangeline, who founded Vangeline Theater
in 2002 and frequently presents Diego Pion and Katsura Kan,
as well as coordinates a project for incarcerated women to
study butoh. Vangelines work focuses on ritual and healing,
influenced by Pions Butoh Ritual Mexicano.
New York is a transient and disparate artistic community,
though, and without the continuous presence of a butoh
master like the Tamanos, who founded the first American butoh
community in San Francisco, where they taught and created
work for more than 40 years, there is no consistent style or
lineage visible among the many artistic groups here that claim
butoh as a guiding influence in their work. At the same time,
there is also a great deal of experimentation artists exploring
intersections of butoh with theater, digital and visual arts, music
and vocal improvisation, and burlesque. Perhaps this irreverent
mixing is necessary to bring butoh into its future potential (which
is also ironically returning it to its roots as an experimental art
form). Still, one needs a solid foundation and deep engagement
with any language if one is to learn how to use it properly.
Yoshito commented that Hijikata first built something that he
could then break. Many students came to Hijikata with no prior
dance or movement training, and so he taught them ballet as
a foundation. In his own movement vocabulary, Hijikata mixed
ballet, German Neu Tanz, and pantomime. Yoshito is critical
of the younger generation of dancers who just jump into the
butoh world with no practice. He says, People cannot make
a revolution if they dont have a foundation, so they should
make first, then break.
Sources:
Anderson, Jack. Dance in Review: Poppo and the Go-Go Boys
La Mama. New York Times. October 25, 1993
Garnica, Ximena. Personal email to author, November 26, 2011.
Kuniyoshi, Kazuko. Butoh Chronology: 1959-1984. The
Drama Review: TDR , Vol. 30, No. 2 (Summer, 1986), pp.
127-141
Ono, Yoshito. Personal interview with the author, November
8, 2010.
Schechner, Richard, Kazuo Ohno Doesnt Commute, The
Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 30, No. 2 (Summer, 1986), pp. 163-
169.
Stein, Bonnie Sue. Butoh: Twenty Years Ago We Were Crazy,
Dirty, and Mad. The Drama Review: TDR , Vol. 30, No. 2
(Summer, 1986), pp. 107-126
www.cavearts.org
www.eikoandkoma.org
www.jinen-butoh.com
www.kazuoohnodancestudio.com
MOVIES
By georgina Christou
The need to fill a silence during performance is one of the main
misconceptions for drama students. But acting without words is what truly
turns a student into an actor. Silent Movies is the first unit I look at when the
students enter the drama program in Year 7. Making them aware that they
are always acting because in reality over 70% of how we communicate is
through non-verbal communications and lets face it, actions speak louder
than words.
Year 7 Silent Movies
About the unit
This unit looks at how silent movies are created. It focuses
specifically on the use of non-verbal communications such as facial
expressions, body language and exaggeration. Students work
towards creating their own silent movie for assessment.
Aims
To explore through drama skills and conventions the genre of
silent movies.
To become familiar with working with a variety of students in a
productive way to create creative performances.
To develop skills needed to create an original silent movie.
Essential Questions
Do we really need to speak to communicate?
Objectives
To be able to improve physical control
To exaggerate movements and facial expressions
To respond to different pieces of music
To work with others to create a performance
To respond through mime to a story
To create an ending, with the help of others
To be able to create an original silent movie
Lesson Mapping
Lesson 1 Introduction to Mime
Lesson 2 The fight/chase
Lesson 3 Mood Music
Lesson 4 The Poor Wretch
Lesson 5&6 An original Silent Movie (Assessment)
Resources
Instrumental music
The Pink Panther theme tune
Charlie Chaplin Clip YouTube
Placard Example attached to unit
Blank Paper
Felt Pens / Pencils
The Poor Wretch Story attached to unit

54 Issue 3 | 2011-12 March | Scene