Gustavo Thomas Theatre

Ibsen, the anarchist, speaks about Freedom

2012-01-08T19:29:00.000-05:00

Here a very short quotation from an Ibsen’s letter to Georg Brandes (1872) where the Norwegian poet complain about the misconception around his texts over his idea of freedom. The text shows an Ibsen much more closer to Anarchism than to any liberal believes:

"I shall never agree to identify Freedom with political freedom. What you call Freedom I call freedoms, and what I call the battle for Freedom is nothing but the continuous pursuit of the idea of Freedom. He who possesses Freedom otherwise than as something to be striven for possesses something dead and meaningless, for by its very definition Freedom perpetually expands as one seeks to embrace it, that if, during the quest, anyone stops and says: "Now I have it!" he shows thereby that he has lost it." (...) "The state must be abolished!" (...) "There's a revolution to which I gladly lend my shoulder. Abolish the conception of the state, establish the principle of free will and all that is spiritually akin to it as the one prerequisite for a universal brotherhood-there is the beginning of a Freedom that is worth something!" (*)

Of course, a text that didn’t help to change the general idea that Ibsen was an ultra radical in the political ambience in the end of European 19th century.

*Ibsen Biography. By Michael Meyer. page 338.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas.If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

In Between, Butoh and Dance Performance by Yoshito Ohno and Lucie Grégoire at L'Agora de la Danse, Montréal. (2011)

2012-01-03T11:43:00.000-05:00

In Between, by Yoshito Ohno and Lucie Grégoire (Montreal. 2011)

I was very excited about watching Yoshito Ohno for first time live on stage (at L‘Agora de la danse); my only experience had been through videos and inside his father’s studio (the Kazuo Ohno Dance Studio), but he was only teaching and sometimes performing minimal chains of movements. Wednesday November 16th 2011 was the day to see him performing in a real production.

In Between is a project, a part of a trilogy (the second part) that Yoshito Ohno has been working with Lucie Grégoire since 2008. Lucie works mainly with modern dance techniques, but she’s been very close to Butoh and also works with it. Master Ohno follows his father's (Kazuo Ohno) teachings as well as his rich experience working (at various times) with Tatsumi Hijikata from the 1950’s till 1970’s; he is a real heir of those Butoh creators.

Lucie Grégoire and Yoshito Ohno performed In Between with several solos and duos, little by little mixing their personalities and techniques. My interest was, obviously, in observing all of Ohno’s movements, but Grégoire was so powerful and the whole piece of such great unity that it was impossible not see both works.

In Between is the encounter of two cultures of body movement, Butoh and Modern Dance, but also the encounter of two artistic personalities. None of them left aside their personal background, style of movement or ways of seeing their own performing art, but their encounter is successful, it reaches a union of a very high quality.

Yoshito Ohno's style of Butoh is simple, clear, we could see and differentiate each action in his work; his movement was so concrete that we could keep our attention on his eyes, his hands or his legs without missing other parts; he knows very well how to direct our attention. His hands were specially strange and beautiful, with almost no movement in them but always charged with energy. We feel him trembling and we never stop watching him.

There were two types of music, two epochs (actually several), and their images gently exploded in front of us. I cannot forget the movements of Grégoire’s back and arms, as well that infant dressed like a rabbit (or a rabbit itself) Yoshito offered to us.

One to one the solos became duos and their physical speech resulted comprehensive and simple: it doesn’t matter what exactly they were talking about, we observed their music, their past, their dreams, we could see their own relatives on stage.

Yoshito Ohno and Lucie Grégoire. In Between. (Montreal. 2011)

Like a ritual, they looked for their ancestors, for their own ghosts. And what we see at the final scene, two charming ghosts coming from the past in a lovely union, is one of the most beautiful and simple images anyone could ever see on stage.

We were pleased and we were happy at the end of In Between.

Slideshow of In Between at L'Agora de la Danse (Montreal. 2011)

The meeting between Henrik Ibsen and Hans Christian Andersen, a curious note.

2011-12-23T11:43:00.000-05:00

Hans Christian Andersen

Henrik Ibsen

In Ibsen’s Biography by Michael Meyer, Meyer reconstructs a curious meeting in London between two giants of Literature, Henrik Ibsen and Hans Christian Andersen. The whole text is a curiosity, it depicts very well, in a real situation, those two extreme personalities, that child-like and frivolous Andersen and the reasonable and self-assured Ibsen, but also is full of simple funny anecdotic details which make reading literature (or theatre) history a big pleasure:

"Hans Andersen was eager to meet the new dramatist, having apparently forgotten their brief encounter in 1852. On 11 August (1870) he noted in his diary: "Fru Melchior told me that the poet Ibsen was dinning today with Carl Bloch, and expressed surprise that I had not been invited. I was put in a bad humor by the thought of how little attention B. had paid to me." "I wasn't there," he wrote the next day to Henriette Collin, "but would have liked to have been invited, to see at last this Norwegian poet who doesn't like the Norwegian." A week later he got his wish, when Moritz Gerson Melchior, a politician in whose eighteenth-century house overlooking the Sound Andersen had, by generous arrangement, a permanent suite of three or four rooms, gave a party for the two writers. Andersen tried to prepare himself for the meeting with a little homework, and the result depressed him. "Read Peer Gynt," he noted in his diary fro 18 August, "which is written by a mad poet. One goes crazy oneself reading this book. The poetry isn't good either, there is something sick and distraught about the whole thing. Am sorry I read it, as Ibsen is coming here this evening fro the first time. I've never seen him; he's said to be taciturn and gloomy." But the occasion passed off unexpectedly well, for the diary continues: "After dinner he arrived with Bloch, and made a good impression … He talked well and amiably. We all liked him."

Andersen's diary conceals how close the evening came to being a disaster. According to John Paulsen, who had the story from Ibsen himself:

"Many of the city's most notable personages were among the guests. Everyone had arrived and was ready to sit down, but no Andersen descended from his room upstairs. A quarter of an hour passed, half an hour; a nervous restlessness settled on the company, and the hostess looked unhappy. Message after message was sent up, but he still did not appear. The hostess quietly went upstairs, but returned with a more worried expression than before. he would not come down. No one said anything to the guest of honor, but Ibsen sensed what was afoot. Andersen did not like to be with people of whose sympathy he was not sure. When people mentioned strange authors he would naïvely ask: "Does he admire me?" The atmosphere grew more embarrassed. It was now three-quarters of an hour past the appointed time for supper. The host and hostess were at loss what to do. Were they to sit down without Andersen?
Then Ibsen saved the situation. He took his host aside and asked to be allowed to go up to Andersen's room and speak with him. The host nodded and showed him the way. A minute after, to the joyful surprise of the company, the two great writers entered the room arm in arm, Andersen evidently deeply moved, smiling through his tears. He was like a small child who has got his way.
"But what happened between you and Andersen in his room?" I asked Ibsen. Ibsen smiled at the memory. "I embraced him and paid him a casual compliment. He was moved and, as he returned my embraced asked, 'Then, you really like me?'" Ibsen added: "It was one of the pleasantest evenings I have ever known. Andersen could be lovable and entertaining as few other men when he wanted to be."

Andersen was delighted with his new acquaintance. He wrote to a friend that he had found Ibsen "very amiable, unassuming and pleasant. I like him a lot, but Peer Gynt not at all."

*Ibsen Biography. Michael Meyer. Page 323.

Exploring Internal Body Zones (Zonas del Cuerpo). Video 3. Neck and Seventh Zone.

2011-12-20T19:16:00.000-05:00

Working with body zones: Neck and Seventh zone (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

This is the fourth of a series of posts where I expose videos (recorded by me) showing the acting exploration of different Body Zones (Zonas del Cuerpo) and combinations of them.

Those who already know about González Caballero's acting method will understand what I meant with Zonas del Cuerpo, but those who don't know anything about this acting method maybe it is better first to go to this link and take a little look (it is in Spanish): http://agcmetodo.blogspot.com/2007/04/el-apoyo-zonas-del-cuerpo-el-cuerpo.html.

If you want to see the last post of this series, follow the links bellow:

- Sexual and Seventh zones: http://gustavothomastheatre.blogspot.com/2011/11/exploring-internal-body-zones-zonas-del.html

- Chest and Seventh zones: http://gustavothomastheatre.blogspot.com/2011/11/exploring-internal-body-zones-zonas-del_24.html

- Head and Seventh zones: http://gustavothomastheatre.blogspot.com/2011/12/exploring-internal-body-zones-zonas-del.html

The process of this exploration is very simple: in front of the camera, and only my face, I must work in the inner concentration of one Body Zone (Zona del Cuerpo), with different levels and positions within the same zone, then I combine it with another zone (in this case the seventh zone, known as the crown, the only one with which all zones in this exploration will be combined).

As the only thing exposed on screen will be my face, no other part of the body will react to the impulse coming from the concentration on the body zone, only the face.

These videos are also part of my Butoh Vlog (http://gustavothomastheatre.blogspot.com/p/gustavo-thomas-butoh-vlog.html ) therefore it is important to clarify that I'm not listening to any piece of music during the explorations or recordings, nor any movement within the space will be the goal (as it is in Butoh). Even when that could mean for someone that it would not be Butoh, I still considered this exploration as part of my training in this discipline because I'm working with inner images and impulses with muscle movement as reaction of it, and that's one of its principles.

I believe the results (and the process itself) of these explorations will be very interesting for those who want to follow them, watching, studying or carrying out the exploration as well. For myself I'm opening another door in my own acting work, and I'm sure it will be the same for others who want to venture into this acting method and its infinite possibilities for exploration.

Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog (Oct 26, 2011): Internal Body Zones Training Part 4. Neck and Seventh Zone. (NO SOUND) from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.
Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog (Oct 26, 2011):

Internal Body Zones Training Part 4: Neck and Seventh Zone.

Working with Internal Body Zones (Zonas del cuerpo). This time working with Neck and Seventh zone, the crown (Zona de la cabeza y séptima zona).
Diferent positions concentrating attention inside the zone. From intensity in low level till climax and back to low level.

This is part of a daily training, I don't have any aesthetic goal in doing it (even when using a video effect or choosing a particular part of that training).
This is a document of my daily artistic life.

Butoh Workshop With Jocelyne Montpetit in Montreal, Québec.

2011-12-15T19:43:00.001-05:00

Gustavo Thomas and Jocelyne Montpetit. Montreal, Québec. 2011.

The decision to travel to Montreal was clear: Yoshito Ohno would perform at L’Agora de la Danse and I wanted to see him on stage; as I knew Jocelyne Montpetit lived there, I hoped that she could give one of her workshops during the period that master Ohno would be performing. And so it was, as part of a 4 weekend workshop, I took 4 very productive sessions (two weekends).

It is known that if one does not work with a teacher (whether it be Jocelyne Montpetit or Yoshito Ohno) a longer time, like at his/her studio every day, for example, there is a danger that each of those "short" workshops that one is taking in this or that place could be the same as others you have already taken before. I did not consider it such a big problem in my case. I'm still in the very base of the pedagogical work of Butoh and a renewal of what I had taken with Montpetit would be a reinforcement, or at least one good review.

I'll do a simple (but not hollow) description of the 4 sessions, because I wanted to include them all in this post:

The sessions were conducted in an imposing building, the old library of Montreal city, today the offices of the National Arts Council, in one of several studios or rehearsal rooms that are very well adapted for performing arts works.

Ancient Montreal Library. 2011.

Jocelyne Montpetit was usually there before our sessions, rehearsing or working with others students. Close before 3 pm she would come to greet us and invite us to enter to the classroom.

Each session lasted 2 hours, from 3PM to 5 PM and there was always music to work. Jocelyne usually gave an indication with a very small theoretical framework or story according to the objective of the exercise to come. Her comments after each exercise were always general (perhaps another story concerning the purpose of the exercise), and only in very special cases were there comments directed at a specific person.

Session 1: Golden threads, wind blows and eyes on the forearms.

- Walking with the image of golden threads which pull from the center of the body and arms (a thread in each finger) to the sky and, once we are at the highest point, on the verge of crashing down, the same golden threads pull us down, taking all our body (and fingers) to the ground.

- Walking while the wind hits parts of our body. We would have to open the body itself to the wind, as if there was a hole in our torso where the wind could pass. This was an idea of Kazuo Ohno: "open the body."

- Walking as if blind: our eyes in the head do not work anymore, our eyes are now in the forearms, and they lead our walking. We move towards where our eyes in the forearms look. Jocelyne asks us to walk in different levels, to the sky and to the ground. Our movement is slow, careful, gentle. For the first time I have a much more sensitive perspective of Maeterlinck's play "Les aveugles".

The exercises are long, a long time is dedicated to each one of them. Jocelyne, during the exercise, approaches and sometimes gives directions, sometimes touching parts of our body and provoking a different movement, more directed at what she believes is the purpose of the exercise. Sometimes, very rarely, someone in the group speaks or even complains about an indication, but that is exceptional, generally all our work is silent.

The music is varied and uniquely beautiful, profound and inspiring: Arvo Pärt, Maria Callas, Jessy Norman, some pieces of Latin Blues, Fado, and so on.

Jocelyne likes to work in groups. The same exercise is repeated in small groups, dividing the whole group in two, or all together with a final indication of movement, as if she were directing a choreography.

Butoh workshop with Jocelyne Montpetit. Montreal. 2011.

Session 2: A sheet of silk in the hands, a soap bubble that should not be broken, the blind and the wind blows again.

- Moving with a sheet of silk in our hands, an imaginary sheet of silk with a small bubble in the middle. Our feet are as soft as the silk in our hands. Jocelyne talks about Noh theater and tells us about that child that had to learn to walk smoothly for years to make his debut, coming and going unnoticed for an entire 5-hour performance.

- Walking with a large soap bubble in the hands, a continuous movement with that bubble in different levels of high. Attention to the other soap bubbles, some are already on the ground and we should avoid breaking them. There should be an exaggerated attention to the whole space, the space itself is a soap bubble, we must avoid breaking the space.

Jocelyne recalls how in Japan, waiting for an appointment with an blind acupuncturist, there was a child playing quietly in the middle of the waiting room; when the blind acupuncturist opened the door and came forward, he gently stopped when he felt the child playing on the floor, then continued walking around the boy... With that attention we should move throughout the space.

- Walking as if blind with our eyes on the forearms again: we did it alone, in small groups, with the entire group split in two.

- Walking with the wind hitting us. Again we work in small groups, different levels of wind force hitting us; at times the wind pushes a particular part (the shoulder, for example), then the whole torso, sometimes we fall to the ground because of the power of the wind blowing; when we come back to walk, we do it facing it, its force against us.

Butoh workshop with Jocelyne Montpetit. Montreal. 2011.

Session 3: Bones movement, a carp moving inside our body, a million small flowers on the ground, and Ophelia with long hair, moved by the river flow.

- All movement start where our joints begin. Hijikata called it "movement of the bones". One special way to move, a way of being fully present during the movement. The idea of moving from the joints is not a technical idea, it is not a doll or robot that moves, we would have to find the soul of the movement of the bones.

As to being present while moving, Jocelyne recalls that Kazuo repeated the same question to his students during the improvisations: "Where are you? Where are you?”.

- Being moved by a carp swimming in our body. This is another story of Kazuo’s: when Kazuo’s mother was dying, she told him she felt something like a carp moving inside throughout her body; without thinking about it, she had taught Kazuo a new way of moving on stage. A carp should lead our movement.

- As we move we have to avoid crushing a million tiny flowers in the ground, we should be delicate and light. It is an image by Hijikata, to silence the movement of the body.

- Walking mixing the inner movement of the carp, and avoiding crashing that million tiny flowers.

The music, as usual, is deep, sensitive, charming. The energy is perceived in all of us; my walking is very delicate and sensitive, emotions run freely.

The difficulty of working with these two images is part of the challenge of the Butoh conceived by Hijikata: Multiple images provoking different movements simultaneously. Jocelyne remembers that one of Hijikata’s collaborators was able to manage up to 60 images in one sequence.

Jocelyne speaks about images and mixes that word with "visions"; sometimes images are visions, sometimes visions are images.

- We are Ophelia, Shakespeare’s Ophelia (even though our images inevitably are mixed with those by the painters who have also recreated the character). In the river, inside the water our immensely long hair is pulled by the river flow. There is no acting, but living the image. The music by Arvo Pärt, so beautiful, creates a blast of emotion, mixed with the strength of Shakespeare’s scene.

Jocelyne splits the group in two, women and men; one group watches the other. She loves how our movements look.

Gustavo Thomas. Butoh workshop with Jocelyne Montpetit. Montreal. 2011.
.

Session 4: A "Dandelion", moving bones, the carp, a million flowers, and Ophelia who dies again.

- We have to become a dandelion and use the onomatopoeia "Puff!" as an idea of expanding the body, exactly as dandelion expands when the natural time comes. A long exercise, with enough time to feel the flower, its characteristics, giving time for dilatation, for “expansion”, for that "Puff!".

- Moving the bones, leaving the bones move the body; lightening the body while walking.

Hijikata said that a butohka’s body should be like a corpse, a dead body that gets its life on the move.

- The carp moves us, swimming within our body; and walking on those millions of tiny flowers that we do not want to crush.

Repeating the same exercise, but never repeating it, each time we have to search for the life of the movement, feeling the carp once and a thousand times.

I remembered watching and enjoying some carps swimming at a little pond inside a restaurant in Kyoto, and also, during my movement I recalled another carp, at the beautiful pond of the Imperial Palace in Tokyo, drawing a curved line in the water before coming to me and opening its mouth asking me for food.

Jocelyne talks about images, visions, about different ways of seeing life. She recalled another myth about Hijikata: he used to chose his collaborators depending on their poetic vision of the world; he showed them a bowl of miso soup and asked what they saw there, and depending of their response he worked with them or not; if they saw a bowl of soup, they were rejected, if they saw images or symbols, they were accepted. A myth, explains Montpetit, but a myth that exemplifies the need for a poetic vision in the Butoh artist.

- Ophelia turned out to be an exercise of almost a whole hour. Her long hair was hit by the current and carried as far as possible. As this was the second time doing it, we could spend more energy in the movement of the river flow over our long hair. A very sensitive exercise, but long, tedious at times, perhaps an endless movement. Tabula Rasa by Arvo Pärt made it feel epic, tragic.

Jocelyne again insisted on splitting the group in men and women, watching each other; then all together but in a certain position. Was she already staging something or only doing something for her personal enjoyment? I don’t know and I didn’t ask her.

That was the final exercise, and it a very good end.

Jocelyne Montpetit and Gustavo Thomas at the end of the
Butoh workshop. Montreal. 2011.

I returned to Toronto with the idea of retaking my daily training with all that I could assimilate during those 10 days in Montreal, but it wasn’t possible: the Ophelia exercise left a physical sequel in me, an neck injury that has lasted more than a month (with several visits to the doctor). No problem, I’ve been waiting for many years to be free and create through Butoh, now I can spend some holidays resting and thinking about everything. In Spanish we say: “Esos son los gajes del oficio”. (*)

(*) Which translates literally as “Those are the perks of the trade”, although it’s meaning is closer to “It comes with the job”.

Ibsen at War: "My book is poetry; and if isn't, it will become such."

2011-12-10T11:30:00.000-05:00

Ibsen's original draft of Peer Gynt. Act V. (Photo from H. Ibsen Biography by Michael Meyer.)

After the publication of Peer Gynt in 1867, in his motherland, Ibsen was attacked as no other author before, attacked because of his style of poetry, his subjects and his strange idea of theatricality (even when Peer Gynt wasn’t conceived for the stage). But that wasn’t the Ibsen of some years before, immature and choleric, who didn’t know how to reply any attack; Italy, the exile and the success of his “Brand” had given to him a self-assurance that nobody in Norway could brake in the future.

After Peer Gynt was published Henrik Ibsen has become a monster.

The next is an extract of a letter to Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (December 9, 1867) as a reply of all those critics:

"Dear Bjørnson, (…) My book is poetry; and if isn't, it will become such. The conception of poetry in our country, in Norway, shall shape itself according to this book. (…) However, I am glad that this injustice has been flung at me; it is sign of divine aid and dispensation; anger increases my strength. If there is to be war, then let there be war! If I am not a poet, what I have to lose? I shall try my hand as a photographer, I shall deal with my contemporaries up there, each and all of them, one by one, as I have dealt with these language reformers; I shall no spare the child in its mother's womb, nor any thought nor feeling that may have motivated the actions of any man who shall merit the honor go being my victim. (…) Do you know that all my life I have turned my back on my parents, on my whole family, because I could not bear to continue a relationship based on imperfect understanding?"(1)

Ibsen is capable to assure that his own text would become in Norway the concept of poetry itself (and it was almost true), and it wasn’t what his critics called errors and mistakes. Who can assure that?

He knew he was at war if he wanted to be the most recognized author in Norway, and that famous sentence about photography that many of us are used to identify as Ibsen’s start in Realism became his chant of battle: “I shall deal with my contemporaries up there, each and all of them, one by one, as I have dealt with these language reformers; I shall no spare the child in its mother's womb, nor any thought nor feeling that may have motivated the actions of any man who shall merit the honor go being my victim.”

We only have to recall his most important plays to see that those words were accomplished.

Ibsen also made a very hard confession about turning his back to his parents and family; coming from a very provincial background, with no intellectual or artistic links, all his relatives were mere obstacles in his way to fame as a writer (since his adolescence he never saw any of them again). Only a man with all his goals in mind, ready to fight any battle to be the number one in his world could write in that manner.

He wanted it, he fought for it and he got it. He was monster.

(1) Ibsen Biography. By Michael Meyer. Double Day, 1967.

Min Tanaka's The Rite of Spring at L'Ópera Comique(1987)

2011-12-07T13:39:00.001-05:00

Min Tanaka

Some discoveries are worth sharing immediately, and it is what I'm doing now with this video of a 1987 Min Tanaka's production at L'Ópera Comique, The Rite of Spring.

I knew a little about Tanaka's work thanks to Jocelyne Montpetit, the Butoh dancer; she met him during the 80's in Japan and even worked in his company. Last November during the workshop I took with her in Montreal she told me about someone who has posted The Rite of Spring in Youtube, and that could be a very good example of Tanaka's work if I wanted to understand the words she transmitted about him.

For some stupid reasons I forgot the tip and it was till today that I accidentally came to that Youtube link. Of course I cannot talk more about Min Tanaka's work, but you must know that he's considered one of the most important heirs of Tatsumi Hijikata, the founder of Butoh, but also a very important dancer and choreographer independently of his relation with Butoh.

The Rite of Spring was staged one year after Hijikata's death, and was considered totally a Butoh production (at least by Westerner's eyes), that style of Butoh coming from Hijikata's branch, the dance of darkness o Ankoku Butoh. Other thing was coming at the same time with Kazuo Ohno and his Butoh of light, as some have called Ohno's Butoh.

Please enjoy this whole recording of The Rite of Spring directed by Min Tanaka in 1987:

The Rite of Spring part 1/7

The Rite of Spring part 2/7

The Rite of Spring part 3/7

The Rite of Spring part 4/7

The Rite of Spring part 5/7

The Rite of Spring part 6/7

The Rite of Spring part 7/7

Exploring Internal Body Zones (Zonas del Cuerpo). Video 3. Head and Seventh Zone.

2011-12-06T19:48:00.000-05:00

Working with Head zone and Seventh zone (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

This is the third of a series of posts where I expose videos (recorded by me) showing the acting exploration of different Body Zones (Zonas del Cuerpo) and combinations of them.

Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog (Oct 25, 2011): Internal Body Zones Training Part 3. Head and Seventh Zone. (NO SOUND) from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.
Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog (Oct 20, 2011):

Internal Body Zones Training Part 3: Head and Seventh Zone.

Working with Internal Body Zones (Zonas del cuerpo). This time working with Head and Seventh zone, the crown (Zona de la cabeza y séptima zona).
Diferent positions concentrating attention inside the zone. From intensity in low level till climax and back to low level.

This is part of a daily training, I don't have any aesthetic goal in doing it (even when using a video effect or choosing a particular part of that training).
This is a document of my daily artistic life.

大野庆人 Yoshito Ohno's Butoh Open Class in Montreal (2011)

2011-12-03T10:59:00.000-05:00

Yoshito Ohno and Lucie Grégoire at LADMMI, Montreal. (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

If last April I had traveled to Yokohama with fears of exposure to nuclear radiation from Fukushima plant, why not face Montreal’s cold autumn this time? Master Yoshito Ohno had told me he’d come to Canada in November this year to perform “In Between” with Lucie Gregoire, a French Canadian contemporary dancer, as part of a trilogy they both have been creating since 2007. My experience in Yokohama had been crucial in my artistic path, so I did not hesitate at any point in going to see the show and if possible take a few more sessions, and so I went.

Two days before his performance, Yoshito Ohno’d gave an open Butoh class for students at LADMMI, L'École de Danse Contemporaine. It would be a class for students, yes, but some interested outsiders were admitted.

LADMMI is part of an art schools complex very close to the Place des Arts de Montreal, but independent from it, in one of the main shopping streets, Sainte Catherine. The building, in a forties style, has been remodeled to host art and dance schools and work spaces for everything having to do with bodywork and design; LADMMI is on the third floor and you can take a look from the street itself while some of the classes are happening.

BELGO, Montreal (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

LADMMI, Montreal (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

The wait was long, since I had to be there early to make sure I was included among those coming from outside (in the end, we were only three outsiders). So that gave me time to wander around Sainte Catherine, observe some classes at the dance school and eventually discover the difference between my view of Butoh and that of a school of contemporary dance. Obviously, for the dance school, Butoh is a complement to the training of its dancers and, possibly, a way to develop a style in dance. For me, Butoh is a performing art in itself.

Classroom at LADMMI, Montreal. (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Yoshito Ohno arrived with his wife, a translator, Lucie Grégoire and the school principal; we were waiting for him, among a huge mass of students with different levels of training. Lucie apparently had transmitted some knowledge of Butoh to her groups, but not all of those students had had contact with Ohno’s discipline.

Master Ohno, obviously, didn’t remember who I was. He finally did it when I mentioned April, that I was Mexican and that I had taken his workshop in Yokohama. These are the curiosities of certain re-encounters, which I enjoy a lot.
I guessed Master Ohno would repeat most of his common exercises: the flower, the prayer, working with silk, etc. But the presence of dance students made me think I’d experience a kind of pedagogy of Butoh I did not know till that moment, a Butoh introductory class; and that was what he did.

It was an interesting class as a reminder of the rules of this art form, but also an example of teaching people these bases without having previous contact with Butoh.


Yoshito Ohno during his Butoh Open Class at LADMMI, Montreal (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Posture

The first thing Ohno (with help from the French translator) said was that we should understand the Japanese characters of man, heaven and earth, to identify our body as in the middle of two forces. He emphasized the image of a line passing through the center of the body to the crown and pulling us up, while the feet were “roots” that pull towards the earth. The chin pointing down and our gaze forward. With that posture, we were to walk. “Amazing Grace” was the first piece of music we worked with in this class.

He made a special comment about the hands; he spoke of the strength of the hands and fingers to remain together, with minimal separation. Then he took the idea of how those hands, that position, the chin down and the line between heaven and earth, were a hell to reach a presence on stage, a link between opposing forces.

We made several physical exercises as if pulling something and feeling the force, and then returning to the position and perceiving this new presence in us. This set of physical tensions initially left in us energy moving within us, and when standing, doing nothing, our body energy was charged without movement, what we call presence on stage.

The flower

In a case he had brought to the studio master Ohno had flowers for all, a lot of scented, artificial flowers. Then he spoke of the flower as the best example of what is standing between heaven and earth, in complete union. He asked us to move with the flowers. At some point he talked about being the flower, but did not elaborate on it. And we moved along with the music towards our flowers.

He asked us to carry the flower as if we were wind, and at the sound of our steps he asked us not to make noise, even when walking quickly, giving an example by doing it himself, saying there was no need to disturb the viewer's attention from our objective; our steps then followed the flower in the wind.

He told us how, early in his career, asked his father, Kazuo Ohno, to teach him to dance, and he replied giving him a flower and saying, “look, you don’t have to learn to dance, just seek to be a flower. Move with the flower. Do this every day; one day you will feel that you are that flower and will not need to have it in your hand any more.”

The silk

Similarly, he took out from his case several small pieces of silk and gave them to us; each of us began to work with the idea of the strength and softness of silk, the strength and softness of our body. Moving from one state to another depending on the piece of silk we were stretching in our hands. That was our body and our interior; when strong, before stretching, as an adult, it was tense; as it stretched, it became soft, like a child asking for his mother.

As we were working on the technical aspects of the performance, he took from his bag Hokusai's painting “The Wave”. And he tried to explain the idea emanated from the painting: the artist, who has a different view of things, can see far away and can see up close, like an insect. We had to represent that in order to move, we had to find different views of our work. There was a technical search, but we had to feel the technical work too.

The piece of cloth

Yoshito offering a piece of cloth (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

He gave each of us a piece of cloth, and we began to squeeze at the same time that our bodies squeezed, twisting with the piece of cloth. It was tension by stress, and the feeling of the texture of the fabric was to guide us in our squeezing movement, we had to work those points as the source of our movement and whatever came of it.

He made short mention of his theory of “forte pianissimo”, where the most complicated thing for the butokah is not to exploit but to maintain the strength of a possible explosion within while moving gently or slowly.

Squeezing the fabric was his way of addressing the “forte pianissimo” idea while moving.

The tissue

Then he showed us the image of the wooden sculpture of the Buddha of Nara. He showed the same photo he had in his studio in Yokohama as part of a calendar. Master Ohno made us note the sculpture's hands, hands that are never fully attached but are together within a separation the width of a sheet of paper.

He then offered us each a sheet of tissue paper and talked about the meeting of these hands together but separated, the same for our knees, and our arms in contact with the torso.

We practiced with that tissue paper for a while, but then he interrupted our work and asked us to add a pray to our movement; without further explanation besides saying that it wasn’t a religious thing, but a personal prayer, internal.

The music played for the final movement was the "Ave Maria" by Schubert, which his father always used in training and was the background music of one of his most famous pieces on the scene dedicated to his mother.

Farewell

At that moment, the time allotted for our class had run out and had to stop. Without saying more, Yoshito Ohno thanked us, saying that all the objects we worked with that day were a gift and we could keep them and should use them daily in our training; then he said goodbye. We all applauded to him, we were at a dance school and this is the way dance students are used to thank to their teachers.

Yoshito Ohno's 4 objects for work (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Yoshito Ohno saying good bye to each one of the participants (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Although Yokohama left me a profound and enlightening experience about Butoh, about its origins and technique, with this short open class in Montreal I discovered (or confirmed), from my point of view, the basis of the pedagogy of Yoshito Ohno for Butoh.

Now I also had something really tangible, physical, to support my daily training, a support as simple as an artificial flower, a piece of silk, a cloth and a small tissue. They will remind me, while working every day with them as physical objects, every of Yoshito’s words, and will be witnesses of my own development.

Yoshito Ohno and Gustavo Thomas. LADMMI, Montreal. (2011)

The performance Yoshito Ohno gave in Montreal together with Lucie Grégoire, “In Between”, will be part of another blog post.

Exploring Internal Body Zones (Zonas del Cuerpo). Video 2. Chest and Seventh Zone.

2011-11-24T10:47:00.001-05:00

Working with Chest and Seventh Zone (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

This is the second of a series of posts where I expose videos (recorded by me) showing the acting exploration of different Body Zones (Zonas del Cuerpo) and combinations of them.

Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog (Oct 22, 2011): Internal Body Zones Training Part 2. Chest and Seventh Zone. (NO SOUND)

from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.
Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog (Oct 20, 2011):

Internal Body Zones Training Part 2: Chest and Seventh Zone.

Working with Internal Body Zones (Zonas del cuerpo). This time working with Chest and Seventh zone, the crown (Zona del pecho y séptima zona).
Diferent positions concentrating attention inside the zone. From intensity in low level till climax and back to low level.

This is part of a daily training, I don't have any aesthetic goal in doing it (even when using a video effect or choosing a particular part of that training).
This is a document of my daily artistic life.

Exploring Internal Body Zones (Zonas del Cuerpo). Video 1. Sex and Seventh Zone.

2011-11-14T19:12:00.000-05:00

I'm starting a series of posts where I expose videos (recorded by me) showing the acting exploration of different Body Zones (Zonas del Cuerpo) and combinations of them.

Those who already know about González Caballero's acting method will understand what I meant with Zonas del Cuerpo, but those who don`t know anything about this method maybe it is better first to go to this link and take a little look (it is in Spanish): http://agcmetodo.blogspot.com/2007/04/el-apoyo-zonas-del-cuerpo-el-cuerpo.html.

The process of this exploration is very simple: in front of the camera, and only my face, I work in the concentration of one Body Zone (Zona del Cuerpo), with different levels and positions within the same zone, then I combine it with another (in this case the seventh zone, the crown, the only one with which all zones in this exploration will be combined).

As the only thing exposed on screen will be my face, no other part of the body will react to the impulse coming from the concentration on the body zone, only the face.

These videos are also part of my Butoh Vlog (http://gustavothomastheatre.blogspot.com/p/gustavo-thomas-butoh-vlog.html ) therefore it is important to clarify that I'm not listening to any piece of music during the explorations or recordings, nor any movement within the space will be the goal (as it is in the Butoh). Even when that could mean for someone that it would not be Butoh, I still considered this exploration as part of my training in this discipline because I'm working with inner images and impulses with muscle movement as reaction of it, and that's one of its principles.

I believe the results (and the process itself) of these explorations will be very interesting for those who want to follow them, watching, studying or carrying out the exploration as well. For myself I'm opening another door in my own acting work, and I'm sure it will be the same for others who want to venture into this acting method and its infinite possibilities for exploration.

Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog (Oct 20, 2011): Internal Body Zones Training Part 1 (NO SOUND) from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.
Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog (Oct 20, 2011):

Internal Body Zones Training Part 1

Working with Internal Body Zones (Zonas del cuerpo). This time working with Sex and Seventh zone, the crown (Zona sexual y séptima zona).
From intensity in low level till climax and back to low level.

This is part of a daily training, I don't have any aesthetic goal in doing it (even when using a video effect or choosing a particular part of that training).
This is a document of my daily artistic life.

Ibsen and the Beauty of Rome. Understanding Greek Tragedy and Art.

2011-11-09T11:21:00.000-05:00

Detail of Tragic Muse Statute at Vatican Museum

Ibsen like many other Scandinavian and European artists from the 19th century, found in Rome the inspiration for their art and their idea of beauty and depth in art. Reading Michael Meyer’s Biography of Henrik Ibsen I discovered a letter to his friend (and sometimes enemy) the writer Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, describing his favorites pieces of art in the eternal city and his reaction after observing them.

Ibsen lived in Rome during his 30s in a kind of auto-imposed exile, and wrote several of his most famous plays during those years in Italy. Being known that he wasn’t used to read books (any kind of, he only read newspapers) this stay was for him more than a general view of the classical art world, it was the visual reading of all the classics in literature and theatre through sculpture and architecture. Yes, as odd as it sounds.

Ibsen sent this letter to Bjørnson (dated January 28, 1864) confirming Bjørnson’s predictions that the playwright's stay in Rome would gradually become attuned to classical art and sculpture.

I’m posting the whole extract of the letter from Meyer’s book and also some photographs (from different sources on internet) that’ll help visualize those works Ibsen is talking about.

"Its beauty (…) grows more and more on me, as you said it would. It comes in flashes, but a single flash throws light over whole vistas. Do you remember the "Tragic Muse" which stands outside the hall in the Rotunda in the Vatican? No sculpture here has yet been such a revelation to me. I may even say that it is through this that I have understood what Greek tragedy was. The indescribably calm, noble and exalted joy in the expression of the face, the richly laurel led head containing within it something supernaturally luxuriant and bacchantic, the eyes that look both inwards and at the same time through and far beyond the object of their gaze--such was Greek tragedy."

Tragic Muse (Vatican Museum)

“The statue of Demosthenes in the Lateran, the Faun in the Villa Borghese, and the Faun (of Praxiteles) in the Vatican (brachia nuovo), have also opened great windows for me into Greek character, and have enabled me to understand what imperishability in beauty really is. Pray heaven I may be able to use this understanding for my own work."

Demosthenes Statue (Vatican Museum)

Praxiteles' Faun (Vatican)

Faun (Villa Borghese)

"Michelangelo's Moses in S. Pietro in Vincoli I had not seen when I last wrote to you; but I had read about it and built up expectation which has not quite been fulfilled--however. I have only seen it once.

How glorious the landscape is down here; in both forms and colours there is and indescribable harmony. I often spend half the day lying out among the graves on the Via Latina or the old Via Appia, and think it an idleness but no waste of time. Caracalla's Baths are another place which holds some especial attraction for me (…)"

Graves at Via Appia

Caracalla's Baths

Maybe is only a curious information but maybe it could help to understand in a better way the work of this playwright and poet, and to better understand the man behind that work.

A Performance In Carmona, Spain

2011-10-31T20:43:00.000-04:00

Gustavo Thomas during a performance in Carmona, Spain
(Digital work by Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

These are some photographs, digital paintings and two videos from the performance Mary Jordan, Barrett Wissman and myself did in Carmona, Spain, during Ana Corbero and Nabil Gholam's anniversary party in September 25, 2011.

We didn't prepare anything in advance (before arriving in Carmona), everything was arranged minutes before: Mary and I asked Barrett to play some intense piece at the piano, and we marked the starting and final movement of my displacement inside the open air pool, and that was all.

Children were there and made feel their presence but that was interesting and almost challenging for all three. Of course the amazing Andalusian landscape we had as a background made our day.

I have to say that this was my first public performance (live) as a Butoh artist (Butohka as it is said), as everything I did before this day had been through internet and closed-door workshops. Curiosities of life.

Mary Jordan and Gustavo Thomas during A Performance in Carmona, Spain.
(Digital Work by Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Slideshow of A Performance in Carmona, Spain.

Video of A Performance in Carmona, Spain.

Video effect of A Performance in Carmona, Spain

Hieronymus Bosch (El Bosco): TENTAÇÕES DE SANTO ANTÃO (Temptation of St. Anthony)

2011-10-24T14:02:00.000-04:00

Temptation of St. Anthony by Hieronymus Bosch (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Hieronymus Bosch (El Bosco): TENTAÇÕES DE SANTO ANTÃO (Temptation of St. Anthony)

In September of this 2011 I visited the Museu Nacional de Arte Antiga (the National Museum of Ancient Art) in Lisbon, Portugal; a museum with one of the largest and most neglected collections of art, religious (Catholic) and universal art. Without dwelling on the sad conditions in which some of the works are on display at the museum I’ll go directly to the piece I wanted to share, "Temptations of St. Anthony" (Tentações de Santo Antônio, in Portuguese at the museum) by Dutch artist Hieronymus Bosch.

As a performing artist I am deeply attracted, in one way or another, to those works of art which "tell stories", and there is nothing I can do about that attraction, so I enjoy when I find those works and try to learn about them. Temptation of St. Anthony is nothing but a bright and brilliant visual account of the story of San Antonio’s temptations, on his walk to sanctity, yes, with the unique way that only El Bosco (Bosch) knew how to do, and thanks to it has become an icon of universal art.

I heard that Bosch, if living in our time, would be a filmmaker and I have no doubts about it, but I'm sure he would be also a photographer and a painter, he would continue to be so. His painting is a recount, without words, and through living deep images, of the moral and physical temptations of San Anthony; each stamp (image or action) is painted in an apparent chaos, but manage to tell stories, and requires little prior knowledge of the life the saint to understand them. Perhaps, if there is no prior knowledge, we wouldn’t know the very details of the historical truth of the man, but we’d know much more of his life, his own images and his inner struggle. Now in our times, surpassed the religious context of the sixteenth century, who cares if this is the story of San Antonio or another character? The piece itself is powerful, appealing, entertaining, well executed, it’s a genial work of art.

This painting is also “dramaturgical” (theatrical), in the sense that Eugenio Barba sees Dramaturgy: as an interweaving of actions, images that have meaning for the spectator.

With “Temptation of St. Anthony” photographs I’m sharing here you will be entertained enough (using the zoom maybe helps you more): with several of these passages, with its characters, with the contemplation of its colors, and with its special way of saying things to the spectator.

What for me is inevitable, watching a painting also as a theatrical piece, for you can be an enriching exploration of another point of view in art, why not trying it?

Temptation of St. Anthony by Hieronymus Bosch (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Detail of Temptation of St. Anthony by Hieronymus Bosch (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Slideshow of Temptation of St. Anthony by Hieronymus Bosch

"Buy a dog, my lord"

2011-10-21T11:58:00.000-04:00

Just a simple Ibsen's dialogue quotation from The Pretenders (circa 1863) which show, in my point of view, that ironic Ibsen of his later years. Even without thinking about the great author who wrote it, this is a charming point:

"Skule- (…) I must have someone by me who will obey me instinctively, believe in me unflinchingly, stand close by me through good days and evil, live only to give light and warmth to my life--someone who, when I fall, must die! What shall I do, Jatgeir?

Jatgeir- Buy a dog, my lord."*

* The Pretenders by Ibsen. From Michael Meyer's Ibsen's Biography. Double Day, 1967. Page 210.

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson critic of the young Henrik Ibsen

2011-10-18T13:44:00.000-04:00

The young Henrik Ibsen (1861)

The young Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson (1860)

The young Ibsen was insecure, choleric and with a remarkable physical ugliness (at least in the point of view of many of his contemporaries), his personality was worthless for many, as Olev Arvesen writes about him when used to see him "entering L'Orsa's café punctually at two o'clock each afternoon to drink coffee and read the foreign newspapers", around 1858:

"That this man with the threadbare coat, old, soft mormon hat and profoundly unassuming mien would become one of Norway's and Scandinavia's greatest men was an unimaginable thought." (Michael Meyer, Ibsen's Biography)

But at the same time Ibsen owned a great talent for poetry, liked (and could) to write theatre and had the dream-ambition of being the greatest writer of Norway.

But around 1859, at 31, and in the beginning of his life as a playwright, theatre director and poet, he has not succeeded at all. That was the moment of Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, who was the head of Norwegian young writers, tall, handsome and economically successful artist; it was him who Ibsen wanted to dethrone. The first fights (Ibsen’s attacks to Bjørnson) were charged of misunderstandings, jealousy and suppositions that only were in detriment of Ibsen himself. Yes, the greatest realist writer didn’t have yet that superb personality and speech what would characterize his last years of fame, a man full of cold wisdom.

After a small scandal with Ibsen’s piece The Viking of Helgeland, Bjørnson wrote a letter to Clemens Petersen elaborating a big description of the ambiance around Ibsen and a strong critic to him. It is curious for us today the remarkable tone of power as a writer and artist Bjørnson shows in that letter, more if we think of Bjørnson’s comments at the end of his life, all totally charged with bitterness and envy for Ibsen.

Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson letter to Clemens Petersen. Bergen, 5 March, 1859:

"The play (The Vikings at Helgeland) hasn't succeeded, though it may seem from a distance to have (…) Ibsen has a little clique of admirers headed by Nyhedsbladet. But every time he has to face the general public everything goes wrong and I've had to go to his aid twice, because Ibsen despite his aberrations is a poet. And I hope some day to get him to be himself and turn away from all this damned pastiche. The day Ibsen admits he is small he'll become a perfectly enchanting poet. I've told him as much pretty plainly, but the result is, he's jealous. He's done all sort of little things to annoy me, and does still. He's angry that I haven't put The Vikings at Helgeland into my repertory. (…) I haven't read his poem 'Gull Cry'; I've heard it's rather affected stuff, and was written largely because Danish monthly said he was lesser writer than me. Now that's exactly the kind of thing that always distracts Ibsen from what he ought to be and do. The point is, he's rather small and gnomish little chap, with no chest or rump, so he feels that as he has no other gifts he has to strain most frightfully when he writes. And so he doesn't write what he'd really like to, and could." (*)

These are very harsh words, but most of them could be the truth, that was the young insecure and sometimes stupid Ibsen; but what a terrible game for Bjørnson because they now only talk to us ironically about his fall and his wrong appreciation of an ambitious man, who “despites his aberration” could become not only the greatest poet and playwright of Norway but one of the greatest of the history of the world.

* Ibsen Biography. By Michael Meyer. Double Day, 1967. Page 161.

I work with... (Nijinsky)

2011-10-07T11:54:00.000-04:00

Every day I'd like to work like this:

"I work with my hands and feet and head and eyes and nose and tongue and hair and skin and stomach and guts"

The Diary of Vaslav Nijinsky. On Life. Page 44.

Ana Corbero's Giant Children Sculptures in Carmona, Spain (2011)

2011-10-05T10:17:00.000-04:00

Ana Corbero's Giant Children Sculptures in Carmona, Spain. (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

I've been out for some weeks and it's because I was traveling to Portugal and South of Spain. I went to Spain, to Carmona (near Seville), for a very especial event, the 15th anniversary party of my friends Ana Corberó and Nabil Gholam. Of course I won't talk about that celebration (that's a private matter) but I will share some photos I took of Ana's giant children sculptures.

I'd seen these sculptures when I was living in Beirut (2003-2005) but never with that amazing Andalusian valley as a background and in such quantity, more than 8 sculptures.

Ana Corberó realized these children-shape sculptures after her experience living in Beirut, a city full of contrasts and frame of many Israeli invasions and bombardments, the face of the children looking at the sky, looking at the bombers, was the inspiration.

I'm sure you will enjoy the images...

Ana Corbero's Giant Children Sculptures in Carmona, Spain. (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Ana Corbero at her studio in Carmona, Spain (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

De sueño en sueño. A poem in voice and letters.

2011-09-21T12:32:00.000-04:00

(Sorry, there is no translation of this poem yet)

De sueño en sueño

Image of De sueño en sueño

Y uno va así, de sueño en sueño, andando, saltando, volando,

viendo pasar la muerte de los otros en un rito incomprensible de cada noche,

de cada sueño, de cada sensación de letargo…

Uno va por ahí matando todo y a todos,

mira su tumba, la del amado, la del perdido, la del odiado.

Uno va de sueño en sueño rodando, con lágrimas que despiertan al otro,

con gritos que no dejan dormir,

y ese se sobresalta, y ese suda, y ese se levanta:

-está dormido- nos dicen, -déjalo soñar en paz, que está descansando-

Sí, uno va, de uno a otro, en una vida completa, entera, donde no más razonamos;

mitad de nuestra existencia o más, mucho más, que se siente plena;

una vida siempre más intensa, más amplia, más extensa,

y de ella sólo un vago intento de recuerdo,

un recuento que se difumina al hablarlo y en poco ya no lo recordamos…

Y sí, uno va así, de sueño en sueño, sin demora,

de sueño en sueño, con los brazos apretados, las rodillas doliendo y los dientes rechinando,

uno va, de sueño en sueño, palpitando hacia la muerte o hacia el sentirse despertando.

Gustavo Thomas
(Toronto, Canada. Septiembre, 2011)

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas.If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

A new book about Ron Athey, a performance art artist

2011-09-19T12:01:00.000-04:00

I'm sharing the entirely note about a new book on Ron Athey's work, and it is because I believe in the necessity of expanding the knowledge of new forms of art, those which show our limits and watch beyond anything in our time.

Pleading in the Blood: The Art of Ron Athey from andrew mitchelson on Vimeo.

This will be the first ever publication devoted to the work of Ron Athey, a central figure in the development of performance art since the 1980s. Edited by Dominic Johnson, Pleading in the Blood: The Art of Ron Athey will foreground the prescience of Athey’s work, exploring how his visceral, body-based practice foresaw and precipitated the central place afforded to the body in art and critical theory in the 1990s and after. While histories of art, performance, theatre, and subcultures have consistently acknowledged Athey’s major contribution to the development of contemporary cultures, there has never been a dedicated book about him. Pleading in the Blood aims to fill this conspicuous gap. Developed in close collaboration with Ron Athey, this book seeks to provide a critical overview of Athey’s practice. In his stagings of crisis, sexuality and death in the time of AIDS, Athey calls into question the limits of artistic practice. Athey has been a crucial figure in the development of performance art and body art; club performance; intersections between punk, queer and alternative cultures; sexual politics, specifically in relation to queer practices and the politics of HIV/AIDS; and the representation of religion and ritual.

The book will track Athey’s work from the 1980s underground through to his influential works for festivals, galleries and museums, which have crucially impacted upon the development of body art, Live Art and experimental theatre. The book will include contributions from distinguished national and international artists, writers and scholars: six newly commissioned chapters on different aspects of Athey’s work; shorter ‘testimonials’ by artists; Athey’s own writings; and extensive full-colour images. Contributors include Amelia Jones, C. Carr, Adrian Heathfield, Lydia Lunch, Dominic Johnson and Patrick Califia amongst many others.

The book will be published in 2012.

More information on Ron Athey’s work can be seen here:

http://ronatheynews.blogspot.com/

The Agency and MIT Press have already raised two thirds of the publication’s budget. However, we believe that Pleading in the Blood merits the highest possible standards and be as richly illustrated and as lavishly produced as possible. Your support will strongly enhance those production values and will be a crucially needed step in meeting our collective vision for the book.

http://www.indiegogo.com/Pleading-in-the-Blood-The-Art-of-Ron-Athey

Casta Diva (From my Butoh Vlog)

2011-09-17T13:34:00.000-04:00

Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog (Sept 13, 2011) "Casta Diva"

I have to accept that I enjoy a lot this idea of moving during my Butoh training wearing anything that makes unrecognizable my "persona".

In my last Butoh Vlog post I worked wearing a wig, a woman mask and using a bed cover. The inner images were still there, of course (that's actually the job), but that play with objects provoked a change of style influencing my movement and of course the result in video.

As usal, the music I was listening to during my training was not what you're listening to in this video vlog (I mean Casta Diva sung by Callas); I erased the first sound and then add the new piece when I feel this matchs with what I was seeing there. The final edition is unexpected, yes, but very satisfying.

I'm sharing some screen photographs (from the video, of course) and the video itself. You can find all posts of my Butoh Vlog in this page: http://gustavothomasbutohvlog.tumblr.com/

Butoh Vlog (Sept 13, 2011): Casta Diva from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.
Butoh Vlog (Sept 13, 2011): Casta Diva

Slideshow in Flickr:

A Selfportrait

2011-09-14T19:53:00.000-04:00

AUTOPORTRAIT WITH TENNIS SOCKS

"Autoportrait with Tennis Socks" (Digital Art by Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

My work is becoming an interminable line of all kind of selfportraits, so I've decided to add painting to writing, speaking and acting. This is an example...

contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

My blood has turned into ink...

2011-09-06T11:30:00.001-04:00

Cocteau was right:

"My blood has turned into ink".

I'm ready to write anything,

I have enough in my arms and legs.

Pain / Dolor (Photo Manipulation by Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

Cocteau avait raison

"Mon sang est devenu de l'encre".

Je suis prêt à écrire n'importe quelle chose,

j'ai plein dans mes bras et jambes.

My body is a space (from my Butoh Vlog)

2011-08-31T10:50:00.001-04:00

My body is a space/

ghosts are moving in it/

beings I invoke and convoke/

They travel from feet to head/

euphoric cry in my hands

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

"La danza del Padre" Comic Strip and Video for the Sixth Movement: Le père est roi et juge

2011-08-29T13:13:00.000-04:00

"La danza del Padre"

Le père est roi et juge

Comic Strip

Video of the Sixth Movement:

La danza del Padre. Sixth Movement: Le père est roi et juge from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

Música:

Realis - I Headrushed (ft. gurdonark)

By Dan S. from Cathayist

ccMixter

2007 - Licensed under

Creative Commons

Attribution Noncommercial (3.0)

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

I could have not been born (Sharing a video from my Butoh Vlog)

2011-08-22T19:02:00.000-04:00

Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog: I could have not been born

Sometimes we feel that we've achieved something, and today while editing my Butoh Vlog for August 12, 2011 I felt that.

There is a myth, a real myth, about my birth, I could have not been born: I was stuck in my own umbilical cord; the cord had surrounded my neck and strangled me. Doctors put everything in order before my birth and now I'm alive.

This video is not an illustration of those moments, but images coming from this myth of my birth are so powerful that work as a source for the movement in it.

Butoh is simple, and only becomes complex when we try to explain it...

Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog (Aug 12, 2011): I could have not been born / Pude no haber nacido from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

"La danza del Padre" Comic Strip and Video for the Fifth Movement: Le père se meurt pour 1ère fois

2011-08-16T11:34:00.001-04:00

"La danza del Padre"
Le père se meurt pour 1ère fois

Comic Strip

Video for the Fifth Movement:

La danza del padre. Fifth Movement: Le Père se meurt pour 1ère fois from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.
La danza del padre. Fifth Movement: Le Père se meurt pour 1ère fois

La danza del padre. Quinto Movimiento: Le Père se meurt pour 1ére fois

Music:

"Except The Darkness In Our Hearts"
by Subliminal

2009 - Licensed under
Creative Commons
Attribution (3.0)

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Photographs of 4 sesions at Yoshito Ohno's Butoh Workshop in Yokohama (2011)

2011-08-12T11:50:00.001-04:00

I've been writing about my experience at Yoshito Ohno's Butoh Workshop in Yokohama and I'm very pleased with the result, many good and interesting comments and good wishes to my new career in Butoh. So, now I'd like to share not words but images, part of hundreds of photographs I extracted from the videos recorded during those days. These photograph also talk about my experience there and they are an invaluable record of my student life, hope you find them interesting.

You'll se only one photograph published of each session (I only choose 4 sessions) but a slideshow from flickr with all the other images. I'm starting with session 2.

2nd session

Slideshow: 2nd sessión Yoshito Ohno's Butoh Workshop in Yokohama

http://www.flickr.com//photos/gustavothomastheatre/sets/72157626701191638/show/

3rd session

Diapositivas: 3a sesión Taller de Butoh con Yoshito Ohno en Yokohama

http://www.flickr.com//photos/gustavothomastheatre/sets/72157626576955943/show/

4th session

Diapositivas: 4a sesión Taller de Butoh con Yoshito Ohno en Yokohama

http://www.flickr.com//photos/gustavothomastheatre/sets/72157626576706225/show/

5th session

Diapositivas: 4a sesión Taller de Butoh con Yoshito Ohno en Yokohama

http://www.flickr.com//photos/gustavothomastheatre/sets/72157626701528874/show/

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Faces and Hands in my Butoh Vlog

2011-08-08T14:12:00.000-04:00

Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog: Faces

As some of you may know I'm working in a personal project around my Butoh daily training, a Butoh Vlog, where I'm video-recording one small choreography which "emerges" from that training; every time a different choreography and every time an amazing experience (in my point of view, of course).

That Vlog got its own site (in tumblr: http://gustavothomasbutohvlog.tumblr.com/ or here in Blogger with a special page for it: http://gustavothomastheatre.blogspot.com/p/gustavo-thomas-butoh-vlog.html).

Many interesting things have happened in that project and today I'd like to share something I consider remarkable, the visual possibilities Butoh offers to me. After many days working and recording choreographies with my whole body in movement, I decided to work only with body parts, first with hands (and arms) and after with my face (and head). The result as I say was remarkable, I liked too much and I can assure there is a lot of new possibilities for a creative work, specially in the field of visual arts.

I won't talk more about it, it'll be better to show it and you'll watch by yourselves. I'm publishing some photographs extracted from the video with my face with some photoshop effects, and after that the two videos, with arms-hands and with head-face, both with a special effect as well.

Slideshow: Butoh Faces

Video: Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog: Inside my head

Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog (August 3, 2011): Inside my head / Dentro de mi cabeza (Xray effect version) from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

Video: Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog: Hands

Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog for July 29, 2011: Two Hands / Dos Manos from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

A Dream Play Preface. Strindberg explaining his new theatre.

2011-08-03T12:52:00.001-04:00

While reading Michael Meyer's biography of Strindberg I found this quotation from Strindberg's preface to A Dream Play. A very interesting and useful words if you want to understand Strindberg's theatre propositions and the acting technique developed from that theatre.

"In this dream play, the author has, as in his former dream play, To Damascus, attempted to imitate the inconsequent yet transparently logical shape of a dream. Everything can happen, everything is possible and probable. Time and place do not exist; on a significant bases of reality, the imagination spins, weaving new patterns; a mixture of memories, experiences, free fancies, incongruities and improvisations. The characters split, double, multiply, evaporate, condense, disperse, assemble. But one consciousness rules over them all, that of the dreamer; for him there are no secrets, no illogicalities, no scruple, no laws. He neither acquits nor condemns, but merely relates; and, just as a dream is more often painful than happy, so an undertone of melancholy and of pity for all mortal beings accompanies this flickering tale." *

* Page 431. Strindberg, A Biography. By Michael Meyer. 1985. Random House. New York, USA.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Sanghyang Djaran (Trance Dance) Performance at Pura Dalem Taman Kaja, Bali.

2011-07-26T08:00:00.002-04:00

Sanghyang Djaran (Horse Trance Dance). Ubud, Bali. (By Gustavo Thomas. 2009)

"The word Sanghyang means celestial and refers to trance dance rituals whereby the performers enter an altered state of consciousness called kerawuhan (descent or arrival) or nadi (becoming). ... The purpose is to restore order back to the village and to exorcise spirits of chaos." (1)

After reading the last quotation you can suppose that in these days trance dances are rare in Bali (and elsewhere in the world).

What I saw in Ubud after the Kecak performance at Pura Dalem Taman Kaja, the Sanghyang Djaran (or horse trance dance), in July 2009, was a performance for tourists; yes, the dancer was "acting" the trance. For us, ignorants about Balinese rituals, there is almost no difference, but for those who know and appreciate Balinese rituals there are.

So, what's the point of publishing here? Simple: this is a Blog about theatre and performing arts, and I'm sure, this "trance dance for tourists" I saw that evening in Ubud was both of them.

Even though there wasn't a real trance it was a very a good "external" example of it and, indeed, a very interesting one, specially in visual terms. Usually in these kind of works with religious origin Balinese performing artists keep the general and basic structure of the original ritual, and we can see example of it all over Bali.

So, from my point of view, this video is worth to watch, but mostly I think this is another good opportunity to see for first time and enjoy one more of those fantastic and special Balinese performing arts.

Video: Sanghyang Djaran (Horse Trance Dance). Ubud, Bali. (By Gustavo Thomas. 2009)

Sanghyang Djaran, A Balinese Trance Dance Performance at Pura Dalem Taman Kaja, Bali (2009) from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.
Sanghyang Djaran, A Balinese Trance Dance Performance at Pura Dalem Taman Kaja, Bali (2009)

(1) Balinese Dance, Drama and Music. A Guide to the Performing Arts of Bali. I Wayan Dibia and Rucina Ballinger. Perilus. Singapore, 2004.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Announce about my Butoh Vlog

2011-07-19T19:14:00.000-04:00

My Butoh Vlog has got its own personality, so I decided to publish it in a special page (outside Blogger), a page only dedicated to it:

http://gustavothomasbutohvlog.tumblr.com

It will no longer appear in this Blog Gustavo Thomas Theatre as part of the main posts, but it will be updated in one of this Blog's pages: Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog

I appreciate your interest.

Gustavo Thomas

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Butoh Vlog (July 15, 2011)

2011-07-18T11:59:00.000-04:00

Butoh Vlog (July 15, 2011) from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

Butoh Vlog (July 15, 2011)

Trying for first time with colors.

This is part of my daily morning training, and nothing else.

After walking and working with some postures and inner images, a short choreography emerges, that's what you see in this Butoh vlog.

The music you hear is not what I was listened to when I was in the training, it was added later.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

“If you feel that the flower is beautiful, then you are beautiful.” (Learning Butoh with Yoshito Ohno)

2011-07-17T13:03:00.002-04:00

(Translated by Tadeo Berjon)

Being a flower. Yoshito Ohno studio. (By Gustavo Thomas. Yokohama 2011.)

Yoshito tells us that Hijikata used to say: “Your body possesses everything within, you just have to find it” and he would add that the way in which Kazuo Ohno and Hijikata did that was through Butoh. Moving every day, each moment of their lives, every moment of doubt, of inspiration, of relaxation, of crisis; moving every moment of discipline and work, of dreaming, of pain, of remembrance. And it’s true, that attitude is completely logical: else, how could we find the all within our bodies if we don’t immerse ourselves totally in it, rummaging in every detail of our unknown interior?

The search is done initially by walking, and the slow pace would seem a premise. In our slow walking we discover that the experience is risky too: if our body contains all, then, besides life and prayer and love, it also contains death itself and its ghosts, that which others suffer and others ask themselves, violence and grudges, fears and anguish, mental labyrinths and hells... everything.

In those games of the logic of being congruent with our Butoh, Yoshito adds other words from Hijikata: “the dead body always walks risking life.”

Nothing in the studio of master Ohno is compulsory; a proposal for movement is not an order, nobody is forced to search for their hates, their fears or their violence; everything is simple, soft; something is commented, something is told, something is proposed, and then we must move. The risk appears because it finds you when you move, like a sunlight or a mother that cradles her baby.

So, while moving in that search of the all within, I could write at the end of my second session: “I’ve just arrived from my work with Yoshito Ohno. Today, dancing, I was a three-day flower, a blossoming peach tree that died in the wind, a prayer, and a child’s heart.”

Our body contains everything and can transform itself into anything. The proposal was always “be”, “you are...”

“If you feel that the flower is beautiful, then you are beautiful” would tell us Kazuo Ohno through the voice of his son, Yoshito.

Tens of photos, both of Kazuo Ohno and of Tatsumi Hijikata, show them “being” that which they imagined while moving. I remember them and learn too.

Hijikata being earth. Photo by Eikoh Hosoe. (book Kamaitachi)

Kazuo Ohno, a pond. Book cover of Hidden Body, The World of Kazuo Ohno.

And in that studio, for various sessions, we were dozens of flowers, under different circumstances and conditions; we were silk, and with it we learned the softness and strength of our bodies, by being the characteristics of silk, by touching silk, we discovered in movement the characteristics of our bodies; and we were bamboo too, and with bamboo in our hands, we explored the strength of our exterior and the emptiness of our interior, the hollowness of our physicality.

Silk. Yoshito Ohno studio. (Photo by Gustavo Thomas. Yokohama, 2011)

We were all if we found it in movement. There are no fixed structures but each session some patterns repeated themselves: Yoshito talks, shows, demonstrates, exposes, asks us to move based on that, we always do it with music, after some 5 minutes he stops, continues talking about the same subject or changes to a new one. And so for two hours every session. At the end, some tea and snacks while we talked about the petty details of life.

How happy I was because I was never judged on whether I really was the flower, silk, bamboo, the sea or the wave! That’s right, I was never judged, nor were the others: we were invited to be and to move while being, and just that.

Looking at pictures of Rodin’s sculptures we learnt that he, like Butoh, was revolutionary because they didn’t imitate the movement of the body, but were simply the body that was expressed in itself, it was a kiss or a hug or a pride. We learnt that impressionist painters, like Butoh, were revolutionary because they offered life from other angles, and that those impressionists got their inspiration to discover those angles from Hokusai and, in particular, his piece “The Wave.”

And then we moved being water, being the sea, being waves, being the force of gravity, the moon itself, and the wave again. We were, in the line of the water (and not always in the same session), the feminine and the moon; we danced to a piece by Chopin, we remembered the mother, the bosom of the mother; we lived the night and retook the sea.

With a piece of cloth we discovered the intensity of our interior: by stretching it or squeezing it the intensity was bigger; by relaxing its stretching our interior diminished its intensity. We played with emotions without knowing which ones they were; it was my mind that associated to some, to my past, to my inventions, to my hidden desires, it responded to what the cloth itself was, my body in contact with the force applied to that piece of cloth.

Working at Yoshito Ohno Workshop. (By Gustavo Thomas. Yokohama, 2011)

Yoshito tells us about the “remnants of emotion”, that which remains after squeezing the cloth of our emotions, that which remains and weighs and drags within. While he commented he moved, his walking was slow, tense, heavy. He talked about the difficulty of expressing those remnants on stage, of the so called “forte pianissimo” and he also moved with great intensity but in an extremely soft way: - “forte pianissimo” - he repeated while moving, and invited us to try. “This is a challenge to face, every day” - he would explain. Kazuo Ohno was a master of that “forte pianissimo”.

In the line of emotions we made them body and voice: on a single occasion (and explaining that he did it specially because I was an actor), he asked me to say a sentence on the heaviness of life, in my language, and to say it while walking. We were all charged with the search for the forte pianissimo. Then he asked one of the participants to climb on my back and let his weigh drop on me; I was supposed to continue repeating the sentence during all my walking. That night we didn’t talk more.

I felt the flower was beautiful, then I was beautiful...

Yes, that night we didn’t talk more; but some other days we sang...

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

"La danza del Padre" Comic Strip and Video for the Fourth Movement: Le père au foie douloureux

2011-07-16T08:00:00.001-04:00

Fourth Movement: Le père au foie douloureux

Original drawing

Comic strip

Video of the fourth movement: Le pére au foie douloureux

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Butoh Vlog (July 14, 2011)

2011-07-15T18:55:00.000-04:00

Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog (July 14, 2011) from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog (July 14, 2011)

This is part of my daily morning training, and nothing else.

After walking and working with some postures and inner images, a short choreography emerges, that's what you see in this Butoh vlog.

The music you hear is not what I was listened to when I was in the training, it was added later.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Butoh Vlog (July 13, 2011)

2011-07-14T17:26:00.000-04:00

Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog July 13, 2011 from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog July 13, 2011

This is part of my daily morning training, and nothing else.

After walking and working with some postures and inner images, a short choreography emerges, that's what you see in this Butoh vlog.

The music you hear is not what I was listened to when I was in the training, it was added later.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Butoh Vlog (July 12, 2011)

2011-07-13T12:33:00.000-04:00

Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog July 12, 2011 from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

First try of Gustavo Thomas Butoh Vlog July 12, 2011.

This is part of my daily morning training, and nothing else.

After walking and working with some postures and inner images, a short choreography emerges, that's what you see in this Butoh vlog.

The music you hear is not what I was listened to when I was in the training, it was added later.

I know I have to work with the camera's angle and the possibility of including the whole body in movement. I'll work with that little by little.

Thanks for watching.

Gustavo Thomas

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Kecak Performance at Pura Dalem Taman Kaja, in Bali (2009)

2011-07-05T12:00:00.004-04:00

(Photograph by Gustavo Thomas. 2009)

Kecak (called also Cak) is one of the best known Balinese Performing Arts, a mix between a religious choral piece, a theatre play and a choreographed dance, based on a choir of local men. It is not an old form, it was created from some ancient Sanghyang (trance) forms during the 1930s, adding a theatrical story. Some give the credit to German visitor Walter Spies, while others give it to two Balinese masters, I Gusti Lanang Oka and I Nengah Murdaya.

Miguel Covarrubias (who was there around 1930) didn't know about Kecak, but did know about Sanghyang and the use of the word "kecak" in its chants as an accompaniment of the trance dance. Kecak developed into a theatrical form when it was separated of the trance and stories, wether from the Ramayana or from other Hindu epics, added to it.

Even when Kecak is the theatrical form without trance, its performance is completed with a short trance piece, the "Sanghyang Djaran" or Trance Dance of the Horse, a piece about which I'm going to talk about in the next post of these Bali performing arts series.

(Photograph by Gustavo Thomas. 2009)

To talk about the rhythms in Kecak I'm quoting the book "Balinese Dance, Drama and Music"(1):

"The polyrhythmic vocal chanting that makes up most of the performance is sung in interlocking parts. Most chorus members know at least four different rhythmic patterns: syncopated cak telu (three syllables), cak lima (five), cak nem (six) and the simple non-syncopated pattern cak ocel (three and seven syllables). There is also improvised panyelah (five syllables). Syncopated rhythms require three voices: polos (down beat), sangsih (upbeat) and sanglot (in between). The interlocking patterns of three and six strokes are chanted within one gong cycle and are marked in the melody by a gong-like sound, sirrrrr. The five-stroke and non-syncopated pattern are freer. All patterns are laid over the kajar and the melody. The kajar is the time-keeping gong, vocalized in Kecak with a pung sound. The melody is chanted as yanger yangur yanger yanger yang sir."

What I saw that night at Pura Dalem Taman Kaja in Ubud was a performance by Taman Kaja Community. Most of the members of that group, as its name says, were from the same neighbour (called Desa), in this case Desa Pakraman Taman Kaja.

That was a powerful and energetic performance, full of life and interesting images, visual and vocal images. Yes, the voice of those a hundred men chanting is still in my memory today, their sound provoked to my whole body a vibration difficult to forget. It was a very unique experience watching this also very unique theatrical form.

Luckily I was able to record almost the whole performance, so you can see photographs and video of it. You have to understand that night it was raining and the visibility was poor, plus my seat was very close to the stage.

Program of Kecak performance at Pura Dalem Taman Kaja, Ubud (2009)

This is what the program says about the story to see (original redaction):

The story is a fragment from the Ramayana, the hindu epic. (...)

Prince Rama, heir to the throne of the kingdom of Ayodya, and his wife Sita have been banished from the kingdom by King Dasarata as a result of trickery by Rama's stepmother. The story begins with the arrival of Rama and Sita accompanied by Rama's brother Laksmana in the forest of Dandaka.

The trio have been observed by the demon Rajwana, King of Alengka, who lusts after the beautiful Sita. Rahwana sends his prime minister Marica to try to isolate Sita so that Rahwana can kidnap her. Marica's magical powers turn him into a golden deer and he enters the forest and when Sita sees the golden deer she is so enchanted by it that she asks Rama to capture it for her. Rama chases after the deer leaving his brother Laksmana behind with strict instructions to protect Sita. When Sita thinks she hears a cry for help from Rama she forces Lasmana to go after Rama by accusing him of cowardice and he goes off to help Rama with great reluctance after drawing a magic circle on the ground and telling Sita that she should not under any circumstance step outside the circle.

Sita, left alone in the forest becomes an easy prey to the trickery of Rahwana who has disguised himself as an old priest and begs Sita for some food as he is cold and hungry. Sita falls for his trick, she steps outside the circle to give the old priest some food and Rahwana grabs her and takes her to his palace.

Once back in his palace in Alengka Rahwana tries everything he can to seduce Sita without any luck.

In the meantime Hanoman, the white monkey, a good friend of Rama, is searching everywhere for Sita.

In the palace of Alengka Sita pours out her heart about her cruel fate to Rahwana's niece Trijata, who had come to love Sita, when Hanoman appears telling her that he is Rama's envoy and proving it by showing her Rama's ring. Sita gives Hanoman a hairpin to show that she is still alive and sends him back to Rama with a message to come to her rescue.

In the meantime Rama and Laksmana are wandering in the forest looking for Sita when Meganada, Rahwana's son, appears and engages Rama and Laksmana in battle. Meganada uses his magic powers and shoots of an arrow which magically turns into a dragon which overpowers rama and Laksmana and they are trussed up in ropes.

The bird Garuda, King of all the birds, a good friend of King Dasarata, has observed the trouble Rama is in from high up in the sky and comes to the rescue freeing hte brothers from the ropes.

Rama and Laksmana continue on their way to rescue Sita and are joined by Sugriwa, King of the monkeys, and his monkey army.

This fragment of the Ramayana comes to an end with the battle between Sugriwa and his monkey army and Meganada and his demon army which ends with the defeat of Meganada.

Video: Kecak performance at Pura Dalem Taman Kaja, Bali (2009)

Kecak Performance at Pura Dalem Taman Kaja, Bali (2009) from Gustavo Thomas on Vimeo.

Photographs of the performance

(1) Balinese Dance, Drama and Music. By I Wayan Dibia and Rucina Ballinger. Periplus Editions, Singapore, 2004.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

"La danza del Padre" Comic Strip and Video for the Third Movement: Le père emmène le frère au cimetière

2011-07-01T13:26:00.000-04:00

Third Movement: Le père emmène le frère au cimetière

Original drawing

Comic strip

Video of the Third Movement joining all cartoons and a musical piece by orang_redux_777 (*)

(*)

"The Mystery of Preludio .mp3"

by orang_redux_777

2007 - Licensed under

Creative Commons

Attribution Noncommercial (3.0)

http://ccmixter.org/people/orang_redux_777/profile

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

A Secret (Learning Butoh with Yoshito Ohno)

2011-06-24T08:00:00.000-04:00

Yoshito Ohno drinking tea at his studio. Yokohama. (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

-As you pray (while we pray in motion) gather your hands .-

And the hands lead us, thinking about what we are praying, seeing it, dancing.

Yoshito stops and, approaching us, says: - A secret! -

He takes the page of a large photo book and shows it to us:

-Nara, a beautiful city, a very old and important Japanese city. There are many Buddhas there but one of them is special; this Buddha is special, look...-

Then he brings the photo of the Buddha closer to us... What's special about it?

Cover of Buddha of Nara Photo Book. Yoshito Ohno studio. (By Gustavo Thomas, 2011)

- Look at his hands ... They don't come together; there is a minimal separation in between, barely a rice-paper fits in between them. There is not another one like it in all Nara. That makes it very special. Everything is compressed between his hands; it is powerful. Kazuo Ohno knew that; it is a secret ...

He looks at us, smiling and thoughtful, at each and every one of us around ...

-Pray with your hands together and feel a separation the width of rice-paper.-

And our hands worked with that separation, and we moved with Maria Callas and Anthony singing in the background. In later sessions we used a handkerchief. That separation could be not only in our hands, but between our knees, as a young and caring woman, and you could also feel that paper between the arms and trunk, between the feet and the ground as the walk of a Japanese Noh master.

Yoshito Ohno shows all while speaking: he is the Buddha of Nara, he is the beautiful and shy teen who walks with a minimal separation between her knees, he is Kazuo Ohno when he performed a woman and his arms barely touched the flanks of his trunk and he is also a walker on rice paper. He continually separates from us and takes a few steps with his hands almost joined together and raising them to heaven. He doesn't pretend to be a role model, it is just that he must inevitably move as he speaks.

Yoshito Ohno and the rice-paper between his hands. Yokohama. (By Gustavo Thomas, 2011)

Yes, his sessions are full of little and big secrets about Butoh, on how to achieve the inner strength of our movement:

- pay attention to your back, as if it spoke;

- a direct encounter with the whole of the space, with its corners, the front, the back, the up and down; thanking the space...

- know where to land your gaze while walking; if you look down you always seems sad, it is better to look neutrally forward, openly.

We "move" every secret, we explore every secret, we practice, without further instructions, without judgement.

The examples to reveal the secrets each are given, as always happens in his workshop, with the remembrance of passages from the two great masters of Butoh, Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata, but also with simple drawings: geometric patterns to discover the different displacements of our body in space, or Chinese characters (Japanese writing originated in, and retains the use of, Chinese characters) on the body, on man, on day. He talks while drawing, he shows us each drawing he makes, he lets us touch it and review it.

The showing of a palpable example when mentioning every secret functions as an inspiration pivot, as a guide beyond than words or formal instructing; at the end every secret comes to us through an internal image that is created from listening to him, seeing him move, looking at a picture or touching an object. We did it, as I'll talk about in the next post, touching flowers, silk, bamboo, balls...

Zen circle image at Yoshito Ohno studio. Yokohama. (By Gustavo Thomas, 2011)

That painting, so simple, known as the "Zen circle" is one of the biggest inspirations for the discovery of the body in motion as a circle, as a whole, as philosophy on scene. Yoshito tells us that his father was also a philosopher and that he philosophized on stage through Butoh, and that one of the inspirations for philosophizing while moving was that image of the circle drawn by a Zen monk, a circle that clearly doesn't close but which we know includes everything. Kazuo Ohno was not Buddhist but he was a sensitive, religious man, wherever he found inspiration he stopped and moved.

That circle is explored everywhere, be it in the space, be it inside and outside the body, be it with our hands. The hands that emanate from the circle itself, those hands that he tells as waterfalls of force surging from Hijikata. Hands are the holders of the circle that is a sphere, the moon. Yoshito asks us to look at the moon, to feel the moon and see it as a manifestation of that zen circle, and the sphere. Our hands can touch the moon, take it, split it into two, move with it, with its strength, with its attraction, with its poetry.

Moving with the spheres on each hand. Yokohama. (By Gustavo Thomas, 2011)

Several sessions with a number of spheres; inner images that move us, and that make us philosophize without thinking, while moving ... How can one philosophize without thinking? I never asked myself that question while working ... Perhaps there was also another secret.

Those secrets and that philosophizing cause a change in others, teacher Yoshito Ohno tells us. For years people around the world came to the workshop of his father, they listened to him speak, watched him move, moved with him and then something happened, they changed, their life changed. Kazuo Ohno had the force to change others through their own secrets unveiled at each session (secrets that no one could decipher or explain), explored through the philosophical or poetic or surreal movement of Butoh.

After a few sessions, those visitors changed the paths of their creativity and, in many cases, their very lives.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Eleonora Duse watching Ibsen's window...

2011-06-18T13:10:00.003-04:00

"La Duse watching Ibsen's window" (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011)

She was there when he was dying

but couldn't see him,

couldn't kiss him,

nor thanking him.

She was there, just waiting for him to appear

but he never did

She was there, just looking and waiting,

they say...

"Duse was visiting Norway for the first time, largely in the hope of meeting the dramatist who had provided her with her greatest triumphs. On her arrival she sent a letter and flowers to Ibsen asking if she might call merely to say "¨Thank you". Suzannah, however, telephoned that Ibsen was too ill to receive anyone. Lugné-Poe, who was with Duse at the time, tell what followed

I remember very well that morning when she had just received this sad message. I went in to her and found her swathed in the long white paladrane which she loved to wear. She sat fearful, annihilated, hollow-cheeked, her face tired and lined as though life was abandoning her. She asked me: "What shall I do? Please, what shall I do?"... What could I do for her? I had hoped so much, for her sake... Next morning, around noon Duse and i found ourselves outside Henrik Ibsen's house. She had bought Norwegian boots, for she wished to go there on foot. We walked round the left of the palace, and at the stroke of twelve we stood beneath the corner window, where, every day at this time, people could see Dr. Ibsen in person, sometimes with a secretary or someone at his side. Duse stood there waiting, in the cold and snow. Who, even thirty years later, would not be shaken by the memory of having been present at that sad and silent meeting? Eleonora Duse on the pavement, looking for the old poet's silhouette behind the big window."

Ibsen's Biography. By Michael Meyer.

My painting is based in a original photograph of Eleonora Duse taken for the production of Ibsen's play The Lady from the Sea.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

Two Street Butoh Performances at Noge Street Performance Festival in Yokohama (2011)

2011-06-14T13:43:00.001-04:00

I’ve already shared my experience as spectator of a traditional Japanese puppet theater performance (1) during this Noge Street Performance Festival in Yokohama. Now is the turn to show you some pictures and videos of the performances of two street Butoh dance groups:

- ささらほうさら Sasarahousara, and

- 吉本大輔 Yoshimoto Daisuke (They call themselves in English: Ultra Ego.)

Watching Butoh in this kind of festival and space (an open space) transforms it in a more strange way than usual (we all agree that Butoh itself is not a very common performing art): it works very well in a visual point of view but it seems that all its characteristic inner strength disappears; it becomes a colorful spectacle and somewhat comical, but almost nothing in it recalled me traditional Butoh performances. Anyhow, that did not seem to bother the artists who were well adapted to those conditions, public and space, and even, I would say, they were acting in a kind of festive mood, very ad hoc with a street event like this.

The two groups performed on the same street space within the festival (24th, April, 2011), one after the other, and lasted about an hour each.

Enjoy.

Video:
ささらほうさら (sasarahousara). Butoh Performance. Noge Festival. Yokohama, 2011.

Slideshow:
ささらほうさら (sasarahousara). Butoh Performance. Noge Festival. Yokohama (2011)

Video:

吉本大輔 (Yoshimoto Daisuke)

. Butoh Performance. Noge Festival. Yokohama, 2011

Slideshow:

吉本大輔 (Yoshimoto Daisuke)

. Butoh Performance. Noge Festival. Yokohama (2011)

(1) See my post of April 4, 2011: Traditional Japanese Street Puppet Theatre Performance: A Drunk Scene and The Lion and the Butterflies.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

"La danza del Padre" Comic Strip and Video for the Second Movement: Le père au coeur

2011-06-06T19:35:00.000-04:00

Second Movement: Le père au coeur

Basic or original drawing

Comic Strip

Video of the Second Movement joining all cartoons and a musical piece by Subliminal (*)

(*) "Eve (single edit)"

by Subliminal
2009 - Licensed under
Creative Commons
Attribution Noncommercial Share-Alike (3.0)

Subliminal / CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

"La danza del Padre" Comic Strip and Video fo the First Movement: Le père qui danse

2011-05-25T17:46:00.001-04:00

In La Danza del padre (Father's dance) creation-process the original drawings have got movement, first through the shape of a comic strip and now as a video. Its singular drama is getting more power and clarifying its theatrical story.

These are only tests, experiments around, but I'm almost sure that's the way to do this. I'm very excited because everything is new for me and feel passionate exploring it.

First movement: Le père qui danse

Basic or original drawing

Comic strip based in the original drawing and text of the First Movement

Video joining all cartoons and a musical piece by Subliminal (*)

(*) "Trapped By Time" by Subliminal

http://ccmixter.org/files/subliminal/28890
is licensed under a Creative Commons license:
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0/

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.

At the beginning are the founders, prayer and the offering. (Learning Butoh with Yoshito Ohno)

2011-05-20T11:06:00.003-04:00

The three Butoh masters in an improvised niche. Kazuo Ohno Dance Studio. (2011)
Butoh is young, very young; it was born in the fifties of the 20th century and it specifically recognizes a single founder, Tatsumi Hijikata. Hijikata discovered in Kazuo Ohno his partner for revolution. Kazuo then becomes the co-founder of the new style and, according to others, its counterpart as well: while Hijikata worked what was grotesque, dark, tense and destructive, Kazuo worked what was bright, soft, loving. Through them both Butoh takes on an unusual expansion and its influence will cover hundreds of artists of all fields around the world.

The first thing master Yoshito Ohno did, after we introduced each other, was to show me a book with photographs by William Klein, 'Tokyo', with images of Kazuo Ohno, Tatsumi Hijikata and Yoshito Ohno doing a "happening" in Shimbashi area in 1960. It was like telling me that he was part of the big moment in Butoh (and indeed he was part of it; a kind of presentation of himself as someone to be trusted.

William Klein Photograph of Kazuo Ohno, Tatsumi Hijikata and Yoshito Ohno. (1960)
William Klein photograph of Kazuo Ohno, Tatsumi Hijikata and Yoshito Ohno. (1960)

Yoshito Ohno has always been there; from the beginning he has been an observer and a total practitioner of the Butoh revolution in Japanese art, of its development and its changes: as a teenager he took part in several performances by and with Hijikata, he learned from his father how to dance, he saw Hijikata die and accompanied his father in every performance during his last 30 years. Being part of its own mythology, Yoshito Ohno transmits Butoh through the example of the creators in the same place in which Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata worked for years, where Kazuo Ohno left his own legacy.

Yoshito Ohno dancing at his father studio. (2011)

Therefore, any instruction to follow in the workshop of master Yoshito Ohno has as a benchmark either of the two founders of Butoh, some of their movements, some of their anecdotes, some of their speeches, some of the comments by others on their work: if you're going to move your hands, master Ohno talks about Hijikata's hands when he was on stage, about how they seemed to emanate energy from the fingers and palms; if it had to do with the feet, he speaks of how Hijikata had such strength in his feet that, the day he died, at midnight, a sparrow came and stood on them for a moment; if you're going to work with the gaze, he talks about how Kazuo avoided the gaze directed toward the ground while he moved along the floor or how he seduced theater technicians with movement and gaze exercises that earned him the respect of those who did not know who he was. If someone had talked about the creation of a surreal body in Kazuo (and that's what a Japanese critic called it), that served us to search for our our own surreality and create it in our body. In the beginning there are always the founders of Butoh.
They then, the creating teachers, are our starting point and inspiration. To them we also offer our work.
And before every offering, we learn to pray.
Never before, until the first day of work with master Yoshito Ohno, had I heard of the idea of praying on stage, in a way so simple, and without implying any religion. Several Western teachers had told me about a sacred workspace, but they seemed clumsy attempts to sanctify something that was totally alien to us.

When my first exercise with master Ohno was just to pray, something new appeared: in his way of saying it (I was lucky to have someone translate for me in real time during that session), in his intonation, in his eyes, the instruction was different; we should take the first step by praying, the first exercise, that is, the first movement, the first movement improvisation.
The first step is, always, to pray.
Yoshito Ohno explained to us that Butoh dance was born out of the memories in Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno of the terrible tragedies of the Second World War, their hatred and their pain; he talked about how Kazuo had suffered in his journey back to Japan from the Philippines, of how he had seen people die on the boat, and that he prayed with them, with those images, and that he also offered them his movement. Then he would ask: what's in your prayer? about what do you pray? for whom do you pray? And that way we began to move.

Yoshito Ohno playing the same music as his father did. (2011)

Every day the starting working sentence was "pray"(inoru "
祈る")
, then he would go where there the sound system was and began playing records, two, three, four pieces: Schubert's Ave Maria (which Kazuo so appreciated), Il mio babbino caro (by Maria Callas), Amazing Grace, or pieces of Buddhist music. And then we prayed, day by day, and each session, and in its repetition new possibilities for prayer were in us: I prayed for those dead who Kazuo saw, for my own dead ones, I prayed for the image of a dying Kazuo, for the feet of Hijikata's corpse, I prayed for my own past ... and I moved, like the others who were there and who also prayed and moved.

Learning how to pray through movement. Yoshito Ohno's Butoh Workshop. (2011)

From that praying came the offering, our movement as an offering: the story of that offering by Kazuo for all those dead people was profoundly powerful, just as the one in which he dedicated his dances to his mother, to the great love he felt for her, where his prayer turned into the sensation of an umbilical cord on stage which was in reality a huge womb.
That offering was a petition, a petition to our strength, to the workspace, contact with it, all our senses on it, with all four corners, four sides, the ground, the sky.
Our movement shouldn't be external, prayer and the offering should be internal: "Nobody knows how you must pray and offer yourself, only you, find your prayer, find your way of offering by moving." It is an ongoing exploration.
That was more than a month ago and today, back home, I still do that, exploring; every day I wake up to move and pray with the momentum of those searching sessions in Yokohama ... Why? I can not say for sure why, I just think I simply need it now.

Texts, photographs and videos in this Blog are all author's property, except when marked. All rights reserved by Gustavo Thomas. If you have any interest in using any text, photograph or video from this Blog, for commercial use or not, please contact Gustavo Thomas at gustavothomastheatre@gmail.com.