teach · lines of work
ni.butoh
to pierce identity. to sharpen sensitivity. to cultivate the exceptional body.
ni: to break down the concept to discover the meaning.
ni: to disintegrate the self to discover being.
ni: to dissolve duality to accept unity.
ni.butoh is a personal vision of butoh that I have been developing since 2008. A practice for going deeper into the whats and the hows of dance. To allow what is already there to resurface.
The training has no linear form: each workshop is self-contained and can be enjoyed independently of the others. At the same time, each workshop hands over tools that can be used in all the others. The only requirement is to be able to beat and breathe.
the destination
Butoh is a dance of life, of freedom. It seeks to become aware of life and of the beauty of each instant. For this it centers on the awareness of death, on the courage to be oneself, on the dignity of death and of life as an “infinite, insistent and inevitable” paradox.
Through a confrontation of the soul with the human body, it seeks to integrate the duality of existence (life/death, masculine/feminine, conscious/unconscious, future/past…) and to find a form of expression unique to each being yet common to all: a truth of the soul through the body, allowing the wisdom of mystery to manifest in conscious movement.
no time
The body exists outside chronological time. Butoh inhabits eternal time.
rooting
The body rooted in the earth can reach any height. The whole as the one and each part as the whole.
deep sensitivity
To perceive the imperceptible. To hear what does not sound. To see what does not show itself.
being moved
Not to move but to be moved. The dance emerges when the dancer stops producing it.
The ni.butoh practice is not a goal, but a passage through four dimensions of human experience. Emptiness, paradox, otherity and the impossible are not linear stages, but dimensions that hold each other up so that the dance happens in the space of mystery. They are the four principles that sustain the dance in the ni space.
emptiness
Me without me. Emptying so that dance can emerge.
emptiness
Emptiness is not a state of lack, but an act of voluntary divestment. For the body to be inhabited by the dance, it must first stop being full of itself. It is the silence before the scream, the blank space before the stroke. It is not about being nothing, but about being pure possibility.
paradox
The fertile paradox. Neither one thing nor the other, and yet both.
paradox
Butoh is neither theatre nor dance, and yet it is both. The absence of affirmation grants me the plasticity to face mystery. Every absolute affirmation eliminates the possibilities inherent in life. What I want to discover is not in the answers, but in the experience of asking.
otherity
I is another. Dissolution of the limits between self and other.
otherity
Identity is the «truth» filter we apply to reality. A strong identity pulls us away from mystery, narrowing the possibilities of feeling life through dance. To die and be reborn, again and again, in every instant. Neither am I myself, nor am I other. The Ni space is a place where all things are essentially the same.
the impossible
The unreachable horizon toward which the dance walks.
the impossible
Don’t dance the flower, be the flower. The body that «is what it is and cannot be anything else» is the first impossible we face. To face these impossibles is a very delicate task that must be carried out with wild respect. Success is ephemeral and slips through the fingers as you drink it.
creation
where I can only begin again.
the end of the principles, the beginning of the end.
creation
In the moment of scenic creation, the Ni space confronts a casing of definitions accumulated over generations. What the scene is and how it is. How much scene. The dialogue between free experimentation in the unnameable and the need to deliver to the audience a work that can permeate their different layers of sensitivity demands a continuous negotiation, balancing the weight of content and container. The «theatre beneath the sand» follows the «open air». Most of the audience will accept neither the impossible nor the void without an adequate predisposition. The scenic container is in charge of generating it: it creates a welcoming space for the limitations of identity, while the disturbing essence of mystery timidly penetrates the recesses of being.
each principle opens a path, and all the paths are doors of the same room.
the map
four paths, twelve workshops; infinite itineraries
By understanding our physical, emotional and psychological limits, we can enter a space of emptiness from which to listen to the mystery, to knock on the door behind which lie the hidden memories of our body, and to let movement arise from another, deeper place. The key: our sensitivity.
Each path enters through a different door and gathers three workshops with a pedagogical progression. You can enter the whole path or go directly to any workshop — there is no obligatory order.
Workshops that exist outside the paths. Special formats that cross borders between disciplines.