Before you can become something else, you must stop being what you believe you are. nidentity is that threshold.

Matilde

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The body carries layers. Not as metaphor — as real weight. Name, history, gender, fear, habit. Identity is the filter of truth we apply to the experience of reality. It presents one facet of each experience as true, hiding others that remain in mystery. A strong, powerful identity pulls us away from mystery, narrowing the possibilities of feeling life through dance. In daily life those layers are necessary: they protect us, organize us, let us function. In butoh they become obstacles. Not because they are bad — but because they dance in our place.

nidentity does not propose to destroy identity but to suspend it. To find the space before it — that moment of emptiness before the person steps in. An uncomfortable, unstable space, without defined form. Neither self nor not-self yet. Only the available body.

The practice is slow. We work slowly, layer by layer, without forcing. What emerges in that space we do not choose — it happens. And in that happening is the dance.

To die and be reborn, again and again, until becoming emptiness.

what we’ll work on

• The threshold of identity: recognizing the layers without destroying them
• Relaxed tension as a tool for emptying
• The available body: before becoming something else
• Suspension of the self: the space between the person and the dance
• Improvisations from emptiness

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upcoming dates