DAI MATSUOKA
BIO
Butoh Dancer/Choreographer, LAND FES Director. Graduated Sophia University, the Faculty of Comparative Culture. Graduated Kuwasawa Design School. Dai Matsuoka has been performing with Sankai Juku since 2005, and has appeared in some of their major works including Kinkan Shonen, Tobari, Unetsu and ARC. He has been director of LAND FES since 2011, a festival that invites the audience to watch music and dance performances as they walk around the city. He has been an instructor for the Scramble Dance Project in Odawara City since 2018, in which both people with and without disabilities create dances together. He also runs BUTOH CHOREO LAB, an online platform with video lessons by high-profile Butoh dancers. He has collaborated globally with artists such as Phantom Limb Company (NY) for “Falling Out”, with Paola Prestini (NY) for “Houses of Zodiac”. In 2021, curator of “Tokyo Real Underground”, the Tokyo Tokyo FESTIVAL Special13 program. Is a Life Kinetik® certified trainer.
RETREAT: BODY AWARENESS & IMAGINATION
This retreat will give opportunities for participants to be aware of the possibility of body expressions when communicating and living with other people. Based on the Noguchi Michizo exercises that some of the Sankaijuku methods are derived from, Matsuoka will share works to release tensions, and invite participants to observe their own bodies, becoming more aware of how we can coordinate the body better and more comfortably. Matsuoka will also throw in various images, rhythms, and emotions for participants to be able to develop body movements that are new and unpredictable, which is the important creative process in order to build up a rich and sound relationship with the body as nature, environment, and other people.
Releasing tension
Spine works
Image and body
Rhythm of body
Emotion of Body
Body that creates space
Group creation
PERFORMANCE: SCORE
Score is a collaboration of Dai Matsuoka, contemporary artist Nobuhiro Shimura, and musician Naoyuki Takeda (a.k.a Datakestra). Inspired by Nobuhiro Shimura’s video projection installations such as “Tender Moon”, “Jellyfish” and “Red Shoes”, Dai Matsuoka choreographed Butoh dance and Naoyuki Takeda composed electronic music. Dance and music develop themselves in accordance with the changing images of familiar motifs on the floor, which Shimura sampled by employing a sociological approach to investigate histories of lands and regions through field work, whose meanings are transformed when placed on the stage.
YUKO KASEKI
BIO
Yuko Kaseki is a director, choreographer, Butoh dancer, performance artist, improviser and teacher, based in Berlin. She teaches and performs in solo and ensemble pieces and improvisations throughout 30 countries. These works are poetic and vivid images that incorporate the spirit of Butoh, performance and live art. Her performance aims to reflect the outsider’s existence. Yuko Kaseki is a Butoh dancer, performer, improviser, choreographer and teacher in Berlin since 1995. She studied Butoh dance and Performing Art in HBK Braunschweig with Anzu Furukawa and danced in her company Dance Butter Tokio and Verwandlungsamt in 1989-2000. Yuko Kaseki co-founded the dance company cokaseki in 1995 and she has been involved in various projects with international musicians such as Antonis Anissegos, Kriton Beyer, Audrey Chen, Contagious, Axel Dörner, Emilio Gordoa, Mieko Suzuki, Aki Takase, Nguyễn + Transitory, Tot Onyx, Kazuhisa Uchihashi, and others, visual artist such as Nikhil Chopra, Morvarid K, Arata Mori, Chiharu Shiota, and others, dancer/performer such as Christine Bonansea, Sherwood Chen, Megumi Eda, Shinichi Iova Koga, Isak Immanuel, Mari Osanai, 4RUDE, Minako Seki, Valentin Tszin, Teo Vlad and others. Solo and ensemble performances, improvisations are performed in 30 countries – throughout Europe, Argentine, Australia, Brazil, Burkina Faso, Canada, Chile, Gerorgia, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Peru, Russia, Malaysia, Mexico, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, Thailand, Turkey, Uruguay, and the USA. These creations are an accumulation of poetic and vivid images that incorporate the spirit of Butoh, performance and live art. Her performance aims to reflect the outsider’s existence. Collaboration with the Disabled Theater Company Theater Thikwa (Berlin) overturns the concept of her dance and has a great influence on subsequent activities. Her strong interest in breaking borders of physical expression led to many collaborations with mixed ability artists such as Roland Walter (Berlin), Sung Kuk Kang (Seoul) and Zan-Chen Liao (Taipei). International collaboration such as ICAS (Japan), inkBoat (San Francisco), Tableau Stations (San Francisco), CAVE (New York), Poema Theater (Moscow), 4RUDE (Berlin), improvisation duo KAYA with Antonis Anissegos (Berlin), Salad theater (Seoul) and more.
WORKSHOP: Sphere of MAGIC x LOGIC
The whole moon and the entire sky are reflected in one dewdrop on the grass.
– Dogen
What is inevitable of existence and movement, it’s desire, impulse, magic, mystery or logical reason? Dance wholly until there is no dance anymore which you knew. Release yourself from your mind and body, let’s flow into an unknown world by opening the door with Butoh as a key. Dance is the accumulation of magical moments. Circulation and transmission of energy, evoke body perception. A clue that connects the present, and origin/ancient, and to be future dances. It is physical philosophy and it retrieves dance that plays with individuals and the supernatural.
This workshop is open for all people who want to investigate and challenge their deeper self and who have curiosity, courage and desire to explore movement and expression through the performative body.
Following Yuko Kaseki’s continuous research with various physical training methods such as Noguchi gymnastics, elements of Tai-Chi Dao-yin, Butoh methodology, Dance Improvisation and Live Art, the workshop is aiming to develop original movement through body awareness, sensitivity, and also discover hidden dynamic energy.
Finding the core of our body (Tanden), which is our energy source, listening honestly to the variants of the Inner -and developing this in relation to the Outer- world, will be an ongoing focus point. Direct physical connection with the others and the space will stimulate and enhance physical imagination and help accumulate a vocabulary of movement and practical action.
Participants are encouraged to discover authentic movement of their own Self from a deeper sense, through playful Improvisation with imagination of elements, essence of quality, gravity, scale, dimension, directionality… searching balance between both extremes of tense and release, silence and chaos, strong presence and disappearance… sharing personal experience of survival in the shape of movement becomes the main ingredient of a collective dance improvisation.
PERFORMANCE: 9 STEPS TO DUST
“The piece is buoyant and, when Kaseki strikes a distorted pose, unsettling.”
9 steps to dust – Christopher Shea / Exberliner
A dance inspired by the kusozu (graphic depictions of the nine stages of a decaying corpse). Often portrayed as a female body in Buddhist art, the kusozu presents a challenging view of fleeting existences for contemplation. In nine layers of inner and outer transformation, the work finds its own physical metamorphosis of flesh and bone, water and calcium, air and dust. A cat has nine lives, then dust. The destination of dust is a new cat.