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''We are too frightened of shadows. We cannot abide our vulnerability, our utter dependence upon a world that can eat us. Vast in its analytic and inventive power, modern humanity is crippled by a fear of its own animality, and of the animate earth that sustains us.''

 David Abram, Becoming Animal.  

 

 

What is magic? In the deepest sense, magic is an experience. It's the experience of finding oneself alive within a world that is itself alive. It is the experience of contact and communication between oneself and something that is profoundly different from oneself: a swallow, a frog, a spider weaving its web.

 

David Abram in Interview with Derrick Jensen, www.derrickjensen.org. July 1, 2000

 

 

This three day research led workshop will encounter becoming animal and ‘creatureness’ and open a heightened physical and embodied awareness of our inextricable interdependence to the natural world. Drawing upon Butoh and expressive voice work, we will train in classic butoh animal forms as transmitted from the legacy of Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata (fish, cat, horse etc) and methods continued by the late Ko Murobushi.  

 

The workshop also draws upon methods investigated by Marie-Gabrielle in her early works exploring Mutations (2001) and Mutability (2003) as well as the notion of Human Zoo (2001 onwards). The focus, through guided improvisation, will be on finding our own mutable animal and cultivating hybridity and fluidity between human and animal metamorphosis.

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Dancers in Foreground of Videos: Malik Ibheis and Gianinna Delpino. 

Live Sound: Nick Parkin Copyright 

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