Event Listing - Education

Sun Jun 29

BUTOH San Francisco presents

Shinichi Iova-Koga: Disciplines for the Hidden Body: Form, Imagery and Improvisation

Butoh Dance Workshops

Tel. 415-821-7124
Website

Location	Date and Time
Margaret Jenkins Dance Lab 301 8th Street, 2nd Floor, Studio 200 San Francisco, CA 94103 district: San Francisco	Sun Jun 29 (10am-2pm)

Description

Each motion or action should contain physical or psychological risk. Only a dance on the edge of control reveals the honest life. Fall into everything (or nothing). Our work is to transform (sometimes abruptly, sometimes gently) the space within the body. The mind is a place with a lot of mud. Sometimes the mud shines.

The process of creating performance work should expand and inform the life of the dancer (aka: the human). Excellent technical abilities are not enough to move us. The development of dance needs to support spirit (I take “spirit” to mean both the liveliness and the essence of a dancer).

I want to find the core reason for movement, whether kinesthetic and imagistic. Using imagery to create the movement form, the body is asked to move according to that interior impulse, not according to exterior form. At the same time, some movements and shapes carry a strong kinesthetic “message” in the body.

I utilize the conditions and environment in front of me. Ultimately, the work must live in the moment, both for the audience and the dancer.

My own vocabulary is based on traditional Japanese performing arts, re-interpreted to meet modern existence. Conventional or unconventional, we confront the question “What is Dance?” Sometimes we break conventions to expand the vision of dance. Sometimes we tread the known territory to discover the depths. Whether theatrical, environmental or kinesthetic, where I am asked to lead, I am also led.

Following imagery and surrendering to the moment, we’ll work in solo, duet and group improvisations. Through intensive reduction, our personal body reality and existence clarifies to reveal beauty, grotesqueness and humor. Work with necessary tension, releasing the unnecessary to let the dance become permeable and malleable. We work from the center (tanden) to move the far-reaching limbs. Develop listening in relation to time, space and motion.

Shinichi Iova-Koga/inkBoat

Shinichi (born 1968) entered the life of Butoh dance in 1991 initially through Akeno Ashikawa and then consistently through Hiroko Tamano and Yumiko Yoshioka. In 1998, he founded the performance company inkBoat. Shinichi has also collaborated intensively with Cokaseki (Germany: 2004-present), Yumiko Yoshioka and TEN PEN CHii (Germany: 1996-2001), Do Theatre (Russia: 1997-present), Minako Seki (Germany: 2001-2005), Shadowlight Theatre (SF: 1993-1997), Degenerate Art Ensemble (Seattle: 2001-present), and often creates improvisation evenings with longtime production collaborators Yuko Kaseki, Sten Rudstrom and Cassie Terman. Named one of the “25 to watch” in 2008 by Dance Magazine and awarded a “Goldie’ award by the SF Bay Guardian in 2007. Shinichi and Yuko Kaseki won “Outstanding Performance” from the Isadora Duncan Awards for the production of Ame to Ame in 2004.