In today’s rehearsal, we watched some videos of some famous Butoh performers and discussed the qualities that we noticed. It was encouraged that we find our own Butoh but that we could definitely take some inspiration from these practitioners. We began our movement with a medi-motion led by Aleks. We then took it in turns to perform our lives from birth to present in 3 minutes for the rest of the company. It was useful to witness and feel each person’s own unique Butoh coming through and was a good exercise to get to know each other better.
In the second half of the rehearsal, we focused on some theory around adolescence from Karl Jung. We learned about adolescence as ‘a separation from our parents through a surge of sexual energy’. I broke down this process into 3 stages - the surge coming through the unconscious mind, our internal response to that surge and then our outward behaviours in response to that. This was useful insight for the creation of Butoh Fus which have specifically revolves around adolescents relationship with new sexual energy. This is our subject matter for our Riposte performance next week. We practiced in small groups, taking it in turns to prompt each other with the butoh fus and then performed as an ensemble. We found excellent resonance and material throughout this rehearsal!