It's already the last day of the month, and I've been planning to write down here about my second Butoh workshop experience of my little project for this year and I procrastinated, and I procrastinated like I never procrastinated before... This is such a strong word, uh? - procrastination. But come on, release yourself a bit from the system... why not procrastinate a bit?
This post is in homage for Ken Mai, a creative Japanese soul who moved to Helsinki in 2006. On the days 06 and 07 of March I went to Turku to take his Butoh workshop. I travelled there with actually no expectation, I was tired from the classes and the huge amount of work back in Helsinki, and thought it was a good idea to get to know this multifaceted Japanese artist based in Finland. I first heard of Ken Mai when I was taking that workshop in Gottingen with Tadashi Endo, there was a sweet Finnish girl who suggested me to google his name as soon as I arrive in Helsinki. That was what I did: googled it, contacted him and got invited for his workshop.
The exchange with those Finnish dancing people was tremendous, I honestly can't express how blessed I am to be part of those two days of workshop. Everyone was present in the exercises, meditations and improvisations. I tried most of the times to be part of it but also to come out of the group and then to have the privileged experience of just observing them dancing. In a demonstration of one of the exercises Ken Mai was dancing with a sunflower, and in the dance the person was supposed to share the flower to one another and so on. I found it really powerful, especially because it was clear that he wasn't manipulating one object (the sunflower), but the flower was leading his dance - maybe a dance to welcome springtime? - That reminded me of Tadashi Endo's Butoh MA - when the dead was leading us to dance. But hey, that flower looked very alive, although it was dead too. Ken Mai once said that how pretty a dead flower is - actually I don't really remember him saying those words, but I guess he said something like that: dead nature is beautiful.
When I stepped back from the rest of the group to observe and take some pictures, I realised that he had led everyone in such a simple way, that they were very engaged to their dance, even though some of the instructions were not very clear to some. There was a moment that I could only see hand, fingers, feet and toes - and that together with the music that was playing was very touching and powerful.
I made some notes on a piece of paper about those 10 hours of workshop + many other hours of talking, walking, having a coffee and taking the train together back to Helsinki, I will be copying the notes down here for the next days.
That was a happy weekend for me: I met incredibly good and generous people there. Hope to keep in touch you guys somehow. It all seemed that Butoh wasn't the most important issue there, but encounters. Thank you Ken Mai, thank you all the participants, thank you Turku.
