Course
We are proud to invite Colorado, USA based master Butoh teacher, Nathan Montgomery from the Movement and Ecology Sanctuary of Art to join us at Panya Forest to facilitate a transformative exchange between Land and ancestral memory. Using dance as the primary vehicle, together we will generate a space of ritualized offering. The aim is to make a prayer, an apology, and a commitment to our shared Mother Earth.
In our post-modern daze, we tend to neglect the truth that all we are is because of all our shared Mother eARTh has granted us. Peoples of more in-tact ways of living throughout the world have always known this and as such have birth ritualized ways of offering thanks to continually keep our awareness if this strong. Yet for most of us, a nagging feeling of loss and neglect weighs on our hearts. What did we miss?
Dance offers us a method of memory activation and an opportunity to not only be healed but to offer healing. As we journey together into our second year at Panya Forest we wish to revive the lost arts of feeding the land via ritualized art. Such acts are not performances, they are embodied offerings. No one is an observer, there is no audience. We come together not for the purpose of being seen but of seeing. We wish to honor our Forest. We wish to let our forest know that we see Her.
Butoh (舞踏, Butō) is a form of Japanese dance theatre that encompasses a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement. Following World War II butoh arose in 1959 through collaborations between its two key founders, Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. The art form is known to “resist fixity” and is difficult to define; notably, founder Hijikata Tatsumi viewed the formalization of butoh with “distress”. Common features of the art form include playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, and extreme or absurd environments. It is traditionally performed in white body makeup with slow hyper-controlled motion. Over time however, as all thing do, the artform as taken on many incarnations. We are honored to have long time student/teacher of Butoh share with us is unique take on Butoh with us, as an act of feeding the Holy in Nature.
When I dance it is all very real, very vivid and very alive. I dance to feed all that is wild and holy in this life. For me it is a kind of ritual experience that connects me to a meaningful and deep side of life. It is a way to maintain flexibility both in my body and in my perceptions. It is a way of being in the world, of participating in and cultivating the relationship between inside universe and outside universe. Of course we all face sickness, old age and death. If we do not keep physically moving, then as we grow old our bodies calcify and bind up. The energy that flows through our joints and organizes around our chakras begins to stagnate. Dance is a way to playfully move through the different stages of our life. In the same way a flowering plant moves through different stages from seed to bud to blossom and withering so do our bodies. For me dance is this process of life and death, it is the journey from beginning to end and then beyond… This, I believe, is the only real health there is and it is possible to dance through any stage of life. You know, to be graceful, open, willing, present. So my vocation is to dance through this life and help others along the way…
-Nathan Montgomery (Master teacher/practitioner of Butoh)
We have not yet finalized the dates so please stay tuned. You can always email us directly for further information.
To learn more about Nathans work, follow here.