BLAST FROM THE PAST

Winter 2018, Senjahopen.

“What ancestors speak in me? I can’t live simultaneously in my head and in my body. That’s why I can’t be just one person. I can feel within myself countless things at once.

Where am I when I’m not in reality or in my imagination? Here’s my new pact: it must be sunny at night and snowy in August. Great things end. Small things endure. Society must become united again instead of so disjointed. Just look at nature and you’ll see that life is simple. We must go back to where we were, to the point where we took the wrong turn. We must go back to the main foundations of life without dirtying the water. What kind of world is this if a madman tells you you must be ashamed of yourselves!”

– Tarkovsky, Nostalghia

“Some people say that the essence of butoh lies in the mechanism through which the dancers stops being himself and becomes someone or something else. This is a different conception of dance then the conventional where the body of the dancer expresses an emotion or abstract idea.

For example, take the studying of a rooster. “The idea was to push out all of the human inside and let the bird take its place. You may start by imitating, but imitation is not your final goal; when you believe you are thinking completely like a chicken you have succeeded.

The important thing with this is not the transformation into a chicken, but the transformation itself, the fact that you change. Only in this way you can bring the body back to its original state. It is not depiction or symbolization which is the foundation of butoh. It is the metamorphosis.”

– Harmen Sikkenga, from Butoh – Dance of Darkness 1994.

Dance: Wojtek Matejko
Music: Joanna John