Butoh – experiencing our body as a vessel: Presence, emptiness and the availability to be transformed and to become

"Again and again we are reborn. It is not enough simply to be born of the mother's womb. Many births are necessary. Be reborn always and everywhere. Again and again." Tatsumi Hijikata (founding member of Butoh) In my long relationship with Butoh I feel it as a living organism always alive and constantly becoming, it is therefore beyond a performative art form, it is a philosophy and a way of living. Butoh taught me and still is teaching me the art of presence, emptiness, body awareness, transformation and availability. Transforming the body into a vessel, observing it like a living memory-book of our ancestors, experiences, evolution and reconnecting us to our environment as our basic home and essential source. Butoh is an avant-garde dance of transformation created in the end of the 50's in Japan. Karavan is sharing over 20 years of experience having worked with the founding members of Butoh Dance in Japan and Europe. Butoh is not a technique but a method and philosophy. The main elements that will be explored in the workshop are metamorphoses, dance through imagery, presence, awareness, natural cycles of life and death and the tension between opposites. The aim is to free the 'domesticated' body from its mundane preconceived set of gestures and movements and thus allowing us to access a deeper and more authentic essence of movement and archetypal expression. Questioning how can Butoh be translated into a occidental Body and why is Butoh extremely relevant nowadays.