Butoh workshop with Moeno Wakamatsu hosted by New York Butoh Institute
Dates and times:
Thurday, April 11, 7-10 pm, 55 Avenue C NYC 10009
Friday, April 12, 6-9 pm, 55 Avenue C NYC 10009
Saturday, April 13, 1 to 6pm, Cameo Studios, 307 West 43rd street Studio B
Sunday, April 14, 1-6pm, 55 Avenue C, NYC 10009
ENROLL HERE:
$265
SINGLE DAYS
Thurday, April 11, 7-10 pm $50
Friday, April 12, 6-9 pm, $50
Saturday, April 13, 1 to 6pm, $95
Sunday, April 14, 1-6pm, $95
MOENO WAKAMATSU, born 1975 in Tokyo, in a house of a Jodoshu buddhist temple in Asakusa. At age 10, her family moved abroad to Canada then to the United States. From age 6 to 17, she was classically trained in piano, and later in pipe organ. After age 18, she moved on to plastic art and architecture and moved to New York City.
She encountered dance at the age 19. She studied at the School of Merce Cunningham in New York. Soon after, she extensively became involved in the Feldenkrais Method, and became a certified practitioner. In the same period, she became also much drawn to the work of several butoh artists.
After graduating from The Cooper Union School of Architecture, she worked as an architect in New York City, while dancing and practicing the Feldenkrais Method. At age 27, she left the field of architecture to only pursue dance theatre as a solo artist. She presents her solo work and conducts workshops internationally. She is based in New York City and in Normandy France.
Photo by Richard Greene
Workshop "Make Visible" with Moeno Wakamatsu
Dance is like an apparition. It appears as if out of a void --- it does not explain, nor make meaning, nor bring salvation --- but it makes appear, as the dance, the invisible consciousness of the world.
A large part of our reality is invisible to us because it is outside of our perception. We cannot see and we do not know. But the imperceptible can manifest itself as a phenomenon. Like a ripple on water by an invisible wind, the unseen has a way to make itself known. This phenomenon, when it occurs through our body, is dance. Through such dance, the audience too can experience what they might be unaware of. Such dance transforms their physical status and shift their perception and sense of time. With transformed perception, they see the world transformed. We do not create dance, we create a world — more truthfully, we make a world “visible”.
In the workshop, we address some fundamentals of how we could approach such dance — dance that can “reveal”, “make visible”.
1. Shift in time. To forget knowledge, to forget function. To give up hierarchy of values.
2. Ways of the Consciousness.
3. To Listen.
4. Training the 'whole self' - physical and awareness as one training.
5. Motivation. Emergence and direction of desire.
6. Externalizing the dance.
7. Imagination.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council as well as the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew M. Cuomo and the New York State Legislature.
