| School Journal |
| ●●● |
31 July, 2008
The third stage of rhizoming
When we investigate in the pro to dream world into much more
deeper realm, we need to taking off our humanistic
interintertation.
Dreams appear through our visual channel, but visual channel is
bouud by daily image as a human.
Our proto life has no eye.
Take off visual image of your proto dream, then we can meet the
proto qualia of life.
Life is always swaying between life and death.
The most images of proto dream are shivering between life and
death.
The essense of almost our nightmares are mostly fear of death.
Every student's proto dream has this element more or less.
Today we try to take off all of human conditions from our proto
dream, and find deeper subbodies.
We enter the third stage of rhizoming, as the following;
Taking off the human conditions one by one
1. Taking off bones and muscles
-Becoming proto body
Transform from human body to the most primitive one celled
creature.
Follow the most primitive tendency as a life, lasy, slow, heavy,
liquid, vapering, and so on, and become your proto creature.
Become boneless creature. become a liquid body.
Become the proto body which your life inveted.
2. Taking off the nerves and heart
-Becoming humanoid
A demon aproach from your bach to you, and steal the nerve.
Feel the process of stolen nerve from your each finger, toe,
face, and whole body.
The demon steal your heart, mind, soul, then you have lost
heart, feelings, emotions. Eyes become glassball eyes.
Walk as a humanoid.
Then system error happen in your humanoid body.
Become a broken humanoid.
Invent your own humanoid movement.
3. Taking off the indivisual
-Become a creature's group body
Change the size of your subbody, and imagine that hundreds of
birds, insects, fishs, mice, snakes, worms in your hand, arm,
and any part of body.
Not you but these creature group moves your body, fllow the
creature's group movement in your body.
4. Taking off the human skin
-Reverse inner hidden skin
Imagine the inner skin drop out from your bottom (Anus or
vagina), and cover your body until whole body is covered the
hiddden skin.
Taste the world through the hidden inner skin.
When inner skin meet the oxigen inner skin receives too strong
stimulus, they feel almost dying qualia.
5. Taking off human space and time
Release from human scale of space and time.
Trnsform into minimum size and scale (cf. Reducing, creature's
group body).
Open another time, speed, and rhythm.
Transform from livng bird to fosil of origine bird with opening
the millions years time scale. Upstream to different age of life
and universe.
6. Taking off all conditions of human
Take off all conditions of human, through these transforming
process which taking off each condition of human.
Finaly become life. Release from the human.
Life can resonate with all kind of qualia in the world.
Rebirth and survive as another being in the defferent dimension.
Dance as a life. Dance the life sway between life and death.
This is the butoh.
|
|
| ●●● |
30 July, 2008
The second stage of rhizoming technique
We continue to investigate in the dreambody.
we can get so many unique principles through the investigation in what happen in the dream world.
We got to deepen the rhizoming technique to the new realm.
1. Progressing rhizome
Subtle specific qualia atart at a small part of body,
and slowly they infect to the next part and next,
until the whole body transform another being.
This is the most basic rhizoming.
Now we got much more variation through learning from dream.
2. Reducing rhizome
This is opposite of basic rhizoming.
The qualia which spread to whole body start reducing until
the minimum size at a point of body.
When the subtle swaying of weakened body get these subtle unique qualia,
the weakened body become full of secret.
The subtle sway is not able to distingush from appearance,
but only dancer itself can know these subtle qualia are
the reducing qualia from their one's own qualia of proto dream.
3. Focusing rhizome
Hidden qualia which is reduced to the minimum size, appear at
a part of body and increase the strenth. Then the amall part of
body can show a strong unique transformation. This strong transformation is
able to become an unique flower of butoh dance.
4. Merging rhizome
Sometimes it happen in the dream what a element connects to another element.
Also the self image appears as two defferent beings,
for example in a dream the both of the killer and the victim can be me.
Then we can merge some of different elements into one body.
One becomes two, two becomes one. These logic is the unique logic of dreambody.
We can merge the world image and self image into one body movement.
Also these transformation is not able to understand what is happening,
it can be a hidden secret which only dancer itself knows.
5. Connecting rhizome
When we amplify a self contact which a part of body connects to another part of body,
until the maximum, it can be a strange transformation.
Qualia can be separate and connect freely at any part.
6. Becoming rhizome
With using these different types of rhizoming techinique, the butoh dancer can become another being which lives in
different dimensions.
To transform another being which is not bind by human, it is one of the essense of butoh.
|
|
| ●●● |
28 July, 2008
Dreambody work
Today we did dreambody work.
Dreambody is a treasure house of hidden qualia which we did not notice.
See the following process of dreambody work.
|
|
| Dreambody |
Dreambody and subbody are brothers.
They are coming up from same world.
There is an only subtle difference.
Subbody has all channels.
Dreambody has mainly visual channel, sometimes it has also another channel.
When we dream the movement channel is closed, because we are sleeping duaring
the dream.
We can interchange between dreambody and subbody by following method.
Entering the dreambody
1. Lay down with calm mind, and maditate with half sleep and half awake
body/mind.
2. Remember the your proto dream which you have dreamt many times, or the
mosy impressive nightmare in your life.
3. Write down the dream with remenbering the body feeling qualia in the
proto dream.
( The following 4 to 8; you can omit them, if you don't have enough time.)
4. Roll on the floor with releasing body. Not you roll, but someone roll
your body, then you follow it.
5. Roll together with two persons, and one body roll over onto another
person's body each other.
6. All bodies roll together with contacting bodies as a human ocean. And
last person roll over on the human ocean.
With being carried by human ocean, move freely like in the dream.
7. Become human mountain. Bottom person go up to the others and roll down
from the top. Each person goes up and down at random.
8. Find a confortable position for a rest on the human mountain.
9. One person start talking about one's proto dream, and
move as a dreambody.
10. The other people become the dream world, or follow the
dreambody's movement.
For example when dreambody swims in the stormy ocean, the
other people become big wave or swimming dreambody.
11. When one person finish, next person starts to talk and
move as one's dreambody.
12. When everybody finish, start self reseach for 30
minutes. And remenber the other impressive dreams, and find
a connection from one dream to another dream.
13. Show one's dreambody dance one and another.
14. Meditate about one's dream world and today's dreambody
dance. Ask to your dream, "Where are you from? Who are you?
And taste the qualia of the proto dream.
15. Next day you find connections between today's dreambody
and another day's subbody movement.
16. Through these process, slowly you can taste your whole
self world, with awaring the multiple connection in the
dream world and subbody world.
Tranforming method
There are some special method to transform from dreambody to subbody.
1. Translating from visual qualia to body feeling qualia
Dreams are coming out through visual channel from the subconscious world.
Change it from visual channel to body feeling channel, or world image and
self image channel. This is the essense to interchange between dreambody
and subbody.
2. Becoming both of world image and self image channel
Try to dance the dream world from both side of world imege and self image.
Sometimes at first you become self image in your dream and next you become
world image. Another way is at the same time become both of them. One part
of your body transform world and another part become self. Taste the whole
qualia of the proto dream.
3.Merging
Merge a element of dream and another element into your body. If your dream
is a struggle between killer and being killed. Become both of them; the
killer and the being killed. You can sink into non dual realm which is
hidden under the dualistic appearance of dream.
4. Rhizoming
Taste the process that a kind of qualia sinks into your body from a part
of body, and spread to whole body, and show the transforming process precisely
with tasting whole qualia.
5. Opening different dimension
Learn the changing process from one scene to another scene in your dream.
How is it happening? At first it starts in subtlest scale whch you don't
notice, and slowly the world are filled by the qualia to the final transformation
of the dimansion.
6. Serch the weakened qualia
You can find many unknown weakened qualia in your dream world. They are
swaying between appearing and fading out. Dance the fragile qualia.
|
26 July, 2008
Subbody resonance theater
|
|
|
| ●●● |
Yesterday students tried free
resonance theater.
Each student stated own solo when one
catched the timing that now is my
turn, and the other student entered
stage with free resonance, sometimes
as a group cobody, sometimes by alone
with listening Jo-Ha-Kyu of total
cobody theater.
Students did it.
The whole theater showed natural flow
without diciding any orders, and any
rules.
This is the first experiment in the
school.
The total lenghth was ove three and
half hours.
Also this is the longest resord in the
subbody cobody theater.
Enjoy the pictures.
|
|
24 July, 2008
Drawing of subbody world
|
|
|
| ●●● |
Yesterday, students drew subbody world.
The drawings help travering in subbody whord as a visual map.
Entering the drawing world
Students resonated and entered into other student's world through different
chanels.
Meeting hidden body
Today studnts entered own subbody world, and met hedden subbodies.
When we try to meet hedden bodies, we need to stop daily body, then hiddden
subodies are able to resonate and come out.
Daily body has rough and large movement which are bound by daily world, it is too rough and no delicacy for hidden bodies.
Because hidden bodies are driven away from daily world for long years, and hedden in the darkness of body with miserable emotions.
We need to transform weakened body which is able to resonate with hidden subbodies.
It takes time to get the technique of weakened body. We need to inhibit surface muscles and open subtle sway by using deep layers hidden muscles.
Students have just started the reseach in deeper hidden bodies.
|
|
|
|
|
20 July, 2008
Dog can resonate with weakened body
|
|
|
| ●●● |
Subbody coboody theater in the first week of July,
After practice of "Bug walk", "Hidden muscle" student's bodies have slowly transformed weakened body.
Then an interesting thing has happened.
A dog in Jogibara village has entered the stage and started dance together.
Students inprovised with dog well with enjoying.
When dancer's body has left from human's body and transformed weakened body,
a dog can recognize the change very sensitively, then he felt deep sympathy with dancers. He might feel, "Oh, today their body become simillar as me, I can resonate with them!"
Untill then, when we practice resonance touch and shiatsu, also a cat entered practice hall and resonated with us often. Always he sit in the middle between two parsons and relaxed completely.
Animals are excellent millars for us.
We can check with them, how deep did we transform weakened body.
Please enjoy the photo albums of last week.
|
|
| ●●● |
19 July, 2008
Hidden muscle
To open anatomical transparent eye for the darkness of body help us to transform weakened body.
Our daily bodies are bound by rugh and large movement by using surfice muscle.
But we have deep layer muscle under these surface large muscle.
They are not straight but spiral, and connect each hidden joint in different unique way.
They are forgotten by daily body and dissociated into unconscious realm.
I call this "Hidden muscle".
We need to inhibit these gross body which is bound by only large surface muscle at first.
Then we can open transparent eye for subbody which is connected to hidden muscle and hidden qualia.
Hidden muscles in spine and body
When we remove large surface muscle like a large back muscles, chest muscles
and stumach muscles, the longest straight spine muscle appears( fig.1:
omited→See Practice Guide "Hidden muscle").
This muscle is used to keep body straight with using bottom muscle together.
When we change the degree of contraction of then, we can controll the flexibility of the body..
For the meditation and Zen sitting we controll them in mudium degree of contraction.
For transform stone body, we contract them in strong degree.
When we release them in each degree, we can transform from solid body to liqiud body and vaperized body according to the each degree.
When we remove the longest spine muscle, we can find tiny muscles which
connect each spine in different dimensions( fig2).
fig 2
We use these hidden muscles to transform weakened body.
The scul and each neck spine bones, collor bones, shoulder blaides are
connected by many tiny hidden muscles in different directions, straight,
diagnal and spiral(fig3).
fig 3
The spine and pelvis and leg bones are connected by soas which is the biggest hidden muscle.
Normally we use soas to bend body, and to raise leg forward.
We inhbit these big movement of soas, we just contract soas a little bit for shortening leg and subtle swaying.
Hidden muscles of legs and arms
(fig 4, fig5 :omited→See Practice Guide "Hidden muscle)
Daily body can controll only large and rugh mauscle; big hip muscle, long thigh muscle, humstrings, and so on.
We need them for daily movement and sports, all kinds of dance, but for weakened butoh we start to inhibit their rough movements, then we can meet subtle signal from the darkness of body and hidden movements.
When we controll them in contraction and release one by one indipendently, we can transform dead body, pappet body and humanoid body and finally weakened body which is swaying between death and life.
Begin to practice for controlling each hidden muscle one by one indipendently, and taste each unique qualia.
When hidden qualia which are folded in each part of body and subtle hidden movement become oneness, the weakened body butoh begins.
Untill then it is only a movement or only just an image.
Long process to become butoh body
To transform weakened body, we need both of long training to listen to the subtle qualia of darkness of body, and to be able to controll subtle swaying of each part of body in different dimensions by using hidden muscles.
It takes long time.
Hijikata himself needed for five years after the big agressive performance of "Nikutai no hanran" (The rebellion of body, 1968, Japan), to complete the weakened body which cuts off all gross movement of dance he learned, and completed the weakened body butoh.
Always awaer of subtle hidden joints, hidden muscles by opening transparent mind, then you can transform another being which is living in different dimansions conposed by subtle strange sway.
Take off all conditions as a human.
Become an unknown being swaying between this world and dead world.
Look at this living world by dead eyes from another world.
Become a rhzome!
Become a secret!
|
|
|
|
| ●●● |
16 July, 2008
Bugs walk
In Hijikata's "Bugs walk" there are so many secret are hidden.
When I continue learning it, every time new findings are coming
out.
It is one of the most important basic method to transform weakened body, as well as "Size walk".
But not only it. It is a treasure house of transformation methods.
"Bugs walk"
1. A bug is crawling on the back of your right hand,
2. A second bug is creeping down from your left side of your neck
to your back,
3. A third bug is wriggling up along your inner thigh,
4. A fourth bug is squirming down from your left shoulder to your
chest,
5. A fifth bug …( Find out by yourself.)
6. You're so itchy, here and there. You can’t stand still.
You're pushed away from here by itchiness.
7. Itchiness under your chin, itchiness at the base of your ears,
itchiness around your elbows, itchiness around your kneecaps,
itchiness around your waist,
Ah! There're five-hundred of them!
8. Around your eyes, around your mouth, in your ears, between
your fingers, in every mucous membrane
Five thousand bugs
9. A bug on every hair
10. A bug in every pore
11. From there thirty thousand bugs are crawling down into your
guts and eating them voraciously,
12. Having eaten them up the bugs are coming out of your body
through the pores,
Now they are eating the space around your body,
13. Now the bugs are full of the outer space and eaten by another
kind of bugs,
14. The condition is being eaten up by another-another kind of
bugs.
15. ( Half a billion bugs on a tree. The inside is all gone )
16. It's your end. ( The will is bugs/ Sense of material)
( Modifyed from a translation by Kayo Mikami)
Let's see them one by one.
Essense 1: Movement of being moved
"
1. A bug is crawling on the back of your right hand,
2. A second bug is creeping down from your left side of your neck
to your back,
3. A third bug is wriggling up along your inner thigh,
4. A fourth bug is squirming down from your left shoulder to your
chest,
5. A fifth bug …( Find out by oneself)
6. You're so itchy, here and there. You can’t stand still.
You're pushed away from here by itchiness.
"
Butoh is not movement by one's will, not self expression.
Not you, but someone moves you.
When you calm down your daily mind and body, and die down consciousness, ego and self, you can empty your body, then it is able to catch subtle qualia beyond the borders between inside and outside, self and others, mind and body.
You just follow these subtle qualia of being moved or enforced.
Then you can find inevitabile movement for your life.
By Hijikata's word: “You begin to move not because you would like to move but because some parts of your body itch you and irritate you. You walk not being led by your will but being forced by something else.”
As well as "spider's thread" which moves you in "Size walk", here You're pushed away from here by "itchiness".
They are just sample of someone"s qualia which moves you.
We can variate from here to so rich diversity of inevitable movement.
Essense 2: Rhizoming
"
7. Itchiness under your chin, itchiness at the base of your ears,
itchiness around your elbows, itchiness around your kneecaps,
itchiness around your waist,
Ah! There're five-hundred of them!
8. Around your eyes, around your mouth, in your ears, between
your fingers, in every mucous membrane
Five thousand bugs
"
In subconscious movement, there are no direction by consciousness like as I move right leg front, and next left arm right. It is rough, large and tree movement.
Not like this rough tree movement, subtle tendency of of one part of body starts and gradually effects to another part untill whole body transforms to different being.
Essense 3' Hidden skin, Hidden joint, Hidden cavity
"
9. A bug on every hair
10. A bug in every pore
11. From there thirty thousand bugs are crawling down into your
guts and eating them voraciously,
"
Daily body ignores these Hidden parts of body and they sink down into unconscious
world.
But when we enter into transparent body/mind condition which is ballansed as same subtle level between consciousness and subconsciousness, we can feel subtle qualia in these hidden part of body and become able to controll them.
9-11 parts are the guidance for you to awear of transparent mind/body.
In Butoh, we don't start from rough and large movement whoich consciousness can controll, but these subtle qualia which are folded in our darkness of body.
Essense 4' Opening defferent dimension
"
12. Having eaten them up the bugs are coming out of your body
through the pores,
Now they are eating the space around your body,
13. Now the bugs are full of the outer space and eaten by another
kind of bugs,
14. The condition is being eaten up by another-another kind of
bugs.
15. ( Half a billion bugs on a tree. The inside is all gone )
16. It's your end. ( The will is bugs/ Sense of material)
"
Here, not only body, but the space starts transforming to another dimension.
We open different dimensions.
We enter there and transform to another being except of human.
We can show so rich possibilities of way of life after ending the age which is bound by modern human concept, by ego, by nation-state and so on, as a weakened body which is swaying between life and death.
Hijikata said; "Butoh is expanding the concept of human."
We can end the human age and open next stage of posibility of our life.
Butoh dancer is a being who show a forsight of the future of human which is released from modern narrow human concept, ego, self, nation-state, disonance(no resonance, no empathy to the weakened being), war and so on.
-----------------
I surprised because I considered that these essenses 2,3,4 are my own findings,
but I noticed that all of them are hidden in Hijikata's "Bugs walk".
I just could not find them untill today, because of my opaque eyes which
was bound by conceit.
I respect Hijikata deeply.
|
|
|
13 July, 2008
"Sen" to "Shin"process with facing to the edges
|
|
|
|
At the third week to fourth week of June course, the self reseach entered from "Sen=Novel" level to "Shin=Deep" level.
When we calm down daily mind/body, we become able to chatch subtle sub-signals in our darkness of body, at the first step we try to follow novel qualia which we feel "New!","Interesting!" and amplify it to a movement. This is "Sen=Novel" process of self reseaching.
Next step is "Shin=Deep" process.
When we meet some qualia which we feel something connect to our depth, we follow and amplify it to a subbody dance, though we cannot know the reason why?
We grow up them to the "Proto body" or "Hidden body" of subbody butoh.
When we found them, the constellation of darkness of body changes to normal condition to strange condition.
Because the folded elements which are "Shadow", "Not-me", "Dissociated character" and "Primitive life tendency" come up to the world.
According to this process, we have to face to so strange unconfortable body feeling and unknown emotions are coming up.
The Ego system feels them as aliens who invade ego's teritory.
Though so many diversitive qualia are resonating together borderlessly in our darkness of body, only ego has it's own illusional teritory. As if a King who has illusional belief that he can controll everyhting in the self.
Ego feels strong disconfort as if unknown invaders enter his illusional teritory.
These unconfortable emotion is "Edge" between the first process(=familliar qualia for the daily ego) and the second process (=the other elements except of ego ) which Arnord Mindell calls.
To face to the edges is the unevitable process to release all subbodies which were folded in the darkness of body for long time, and accept whole self.
This unconfortable emotion is so bitter even for me who has experienced for long years.
All students faced these edges everyday, and somehow managed to the crisis with sharing tears and fears.
You may feel subtle differences comparing the first stage through photos of this week, though it is hardly to catch them by camera.
|
|
6 July, 2008
Days of tears and resonance
|
|
|
|
|
|