Schools, TAFE & Uni Programs

BODYWEATHER & BUTOH

Our artists can bring training, creative processes and develop artworks with students in different levels and contexts. We can also present performances from our repertoire within school and university contexts.

We offer the following workshops for high-schools, and elective modules for TAFE which cover the different aspects of performing, making and analysing performance, in line with the new NATIONAL DANCE QUALIFICATIONS under Vocational Education & Training, alongside the new NATIONAL CURRICULUM:

INTRO – BodyWeather & Butoh
Practical introduction for beginners, intermediate or advanced students.

WEATHER BODY – Performing BodyWeather & Butoh
Pre-requisite Intro.

CREATING A BODYWEATHER & BUTOH PERFORMANCE:
Creating a BodyWeather & Butoh performance:
Pre-requisite Intro.

    Solo Weather – Individual Performance
    Collective Weather – Group Performance
    Place – Site-specific performance

WHAT’S THE WEATHER? Appreciating & appraising a BodyWeather & Butoh performance
Theoretical unit.

For further information please contact Sam Hawker, 0420 293 139

WHAT IS BODYWEATHER?

  • a synthesis of eastern and western practice and thought;
  • practical strategy to the body and to the mind;
  • supplies a neutral standpoint and aims to expose the intelligence of the body;
  • the weather of the body;
  • proposes the body as an environment reflecting a greater environment
  • is improvisation; freedom to experiment and explore;
  • the body is the primary tool of communication;
  • is interdisciplinary;
  • explores change;
  • engages through the spirit;
  • embraces the asymmetrical, the imperfect, the wounded;
  • articulates dreams and the intangible world;
  • intensifies experience – poetry, symbolism, abstraction- to distill the essence;
  • an immersive, transformative theatre of the senses
  • danced by life.

BodyWeather was founded by butoh dancer Min Tanaka. It is a broadbased, comprehensive physical training which cultivates a conscious relation to the state of constant change inside and outside the body. It is an open investigation that can be relevant for anyone interested in exploring the body.

Butoh arose in the 1950’s, and despite being fiercely contemporary, it references origins in ancient Japan. Images are emphasized and used to transform and explore extremities of the body and our experience.