Light, darkness and the inner light (Seisaku’s Workshop)

 

My last session at Yuri & Seisaku’s Butoh workshop couldn’t be more touching exploring darkness and light as impulse of the movement.

When Seisaku explored for first time this exercise Hijikata made him stay seated under the sun for two hours, Seisaku told us in that mythical way all talk about that time when Hijikata was alive.

After Yuri guided the physical training, we worked the exercises of today’s Butoh:

-Seated with one knee in the floor to keep ourselves active we explored light and darkness: light, receiving from the sun, up; darkness attracting our body down to the earth, covered by layers of darkness.

-Light and darkness, sky and earth, day and night, one after the other.

-Feeding ourselves of light (wholes with lights in the room).

-Looking for the lights (light coming in through the windows), those sources of light afar, from the buildings, from the street and again feeding our bodies with those lights.

-With wholes of lights all over the studio and windows opened looking for parts of the body absorbing the light, one by one.

-Walking in a forest full with fireflies, looking for them; two fireflies are in our stomach, so we can attract easily the others to our bodies.

-The night, the stars, the forest, fireflies flying into our body one by one flying all over or body, till be hundreds inside.

-Balls of light around attract us, threads of light linking those balls of light to our bodies.

-Holding a ball of light in front of us, the light of the ball (which is no more a spherical material object) shows us our family inside, it is the light of our best family moments that lightens our face.

Many moments during the exercises were remarkable, memorable, touching, full of… light.

After the workshop we went to an Okinawa’s food restaurant to have dinner, I said good bye to them and we took the impossible to forget selfie all together.

A little note apart:

I asked Seisaku if he had seen Hijikata’s choreography performance of Tohoku Kabuki Plan IV, as I watched the video yesterday at the Hijikata Archive, and he told me that he actually had performed in that show, and described some actions and reactions. Well, what can I say? Simple that speaks for itself the importance of me being on his side learning from the line of the original fathers.

(Thursday February 21st, 2019)