- FULL NAME: Ryuzo FUKUHARA

- EMAIL ADRESS    : ryuzo.fukuhara@gmail.com

- PHONE NUMBER: 0038640290933

- KEY TEACHER (YES/NO. if yes, which partner organization?):

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- TITLE OF THE ACTIVITY: Seeds of Dance – Phenomenological approach to dance

- DETAILED CONTENT DESCRIPTION (300 words or more):

“Seeds of Dance-Phenomenological approach to dance” is a series of methods which focuses on making dancer, as well as non-dancer obtain sharpen sensitivity to communicate with the environment in the performance, and to strengthen his/her imaginations to master own body. It has been inspired by Phenomenology, which Edmund Husserl set forth its theory and Maurice Merleau-Ponty had pursued with the concept of “the body” as an existence between the subject and the object.

When we look at a tree in the forest, we can recognize that this is a tree as knowledge, but we do not know anything about that specific tree. Maurice Merleau-Ponty defined that, in his, this knowledge is “prejudice of consciousness”. Dance would be potentially able to avoid this “prejudice of consciousness” and to approach to the objects in space by a direct connection between perceived information and physical activity. The method I created, first of all, the trainees learn that how they are describing the world which they confront in everyday life with the knowledge and how they can do it better with their bodies in performance. The goal of the work is, on the contrary, to discover how they can avoid such descriptions for performance. When the dancer perceives a thing in the performance, he/she avoids describing it neither for the others nor the self, but interprets it directly into movement for the dance toward people.

A dancer in space, he/she discriminates objects in the space as a background. When a performance begins by the dancer, he/she focuses at every moment on specific object from the background. It arises as a figure. When we focus on an object in everyday life, this figure obtains significance or meaning by the perceiving immediately. The significance/meaning appears as knowledge which is “prejudice of consciousness”. It delimits our perception. However, in the performance, the dancer who focuses on the object would be able to avoid such a significance/meaning by detachment. So that the figure arises without the significance. Detachment is a skill to stop attaching the knowledge about a specific object, but to observe them by the integrated sense of the body. In other word, we impoverish the perception by the knowledge when we perceive the objects around us, it is because we determine that we do not need to know more for some practical reasons or by personal emotional attachment, also because we are likely consider that it would be impossible to know further more. The approach which I propose is taking neither way of delimitation of the perception, but to dance the quality of things. Dance is a sensation which is not delimited by the practical reason such as for social life or routine procedure. The dancer is able to react to objects which are surrounding him/her without judgment. He/she recognizes own movements retroactively, not aiming to adapt him/herself to the fixed future motions. In the dance both a real object which the dancer perceives and an imaginary object which the dancer visualizes has the same value as motives for making the movements. Three methods support dancer’s movement and perception as follows.

1. Seeds for choreography

2. Integrated sense of the body

3. Retroactive recognition

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1.  Seeds for choreography

In this tentative approach a dancer is not choreographed by concrete sequence of bodily forms, but by motives which stimulate the dancer to give rise movement from himself/herself. Before starting with the explanation of the way of choreography, it would be good to define a scope of the movements that from which point the motion is recognized as “movement”. Tatsumi Hijikata, the founder of Butoh once stated Butoh dance by a contradictory sentence “Butoh is a dead body which attempts to keep standing with his all vitality”. I extract a condition from it that in the Butoh performance a dancer apparently can be no motion like dead. By this interpretation I define an extremity of the movement of the dance as no motion as a corpus, as if he/she does not have any life power. In this condition, a dancer can have any moves whatever he/she wishes.

The choreography is usually included in a piece of dance, not exist alone. However, in this description I treat the choreography apart from a piece of dance. So that it can be free from specific theme or message which usually dance piece would contain.

A motive would work for the dancer to give some hints of movement. It can be an object in front of him/her, or an image from memory. The important attitude to make movement from it is that he/she does not explain about the motive, what is it or how he/she accepts and approaches, to outside like people who watch the performance, but tells in own body. This action can be supported by his/her memory and the imagination. For example, if the dancer has chosen an image of a stone, he/she will also choose its characteristic and situation, and relationship with him/herself according to the sense which the original image of the stone triggered. In the case that the chosen motive is an object outside body such conditions have been given already. For both cases of motives, exercises below help to interpret the sensation into the movement: 

A)     Imitation

Two trainees face each other with standing position in a good distance in which they can see the whole body in sight. One is a leader who makes movements, and another is an imitator who imitates the leader’s move. What is the most important for this exercise is that there is no time delay between two moves, the leader’s and the imitator’s. When we do this work, we would unconsciously compete against each other, like the leader would begin to challenge the imitator as a competitor. So the leader should be conscious of this fact, not competing but sharing. The leader opens his/her idea of the next move in the movement, each of the movement should have its sign in the previous movement. When the leader noticed that the imitator does not follow exactly or there is delay, he/she should solve it in the moment, by waiting or by indicating the difference and so on. As if the leader possesses the imitator’s body from inside. The imitator always forecasts the next move from the leader’s previous movement. The imitator’s moves can be as if he/she imitates the leader’s future movement. In other words, the imitator’s movements are followed by the leader.

B)     Energy trace

A trainee (tracer) stands in front of his/her partner. The tracer images/visualizes flow of the energy which is radiating from the partner's body. It is arbitrary, whatever the tracer can image. Then he/she follows the visuals by whole body. He/she can choose any ways to follow the visualizations. The visualizations of energy flow should be connected with the tracer’s partner's presence. The partner is basically standing still, but possibly can feel kind of induction by the tracer’s movement. In other word, the movement following the visualization of the partner’s energy flow would be considered as a characteristic of the partner. The characteristics of the partner become motives for movements.

C)     Body chess

Two trainees face each other and move together like a chess game. They react each of partners’ move as quick as possible (but the movement itself does not have to be “quick”) without thinking.

D)      Tales for dance

This exercise focuses to enhance the imagination, its sustainability and richness, to communicate with dancer’s own body. Also through this exercise dancers find their individual unique movements in relation with the environment which is surrounding the dancers.

A trainee chooses a word as the theme of his/her performance such as stone, rain, dog and so on. First of all, he/she makes a form of the body which is inspired by the theme. The trainee presents the form to other trainees. Basically he/she does not have to move from this position. Rather refuses that accustomed movements appear. During presenting the form, he/she observes what kind of thinking and other imaginations are coming out. The next step is that the trainee writes down 10 words in association with the theme, which constitute a tale/a world in which the body of a trainee exists. The chief relation of the words is appeared from some questions like “Who are you?”, “How are you?”, “When is it?”, “Where is there?”. When the trainee got a tale he/she starts to make a sequence of the movements base on the tale. When he/she present the performance based of the theme, the most important attitude is that the trainee does not explain his/her own tale by the performance to the public who are watching it, in fact they do not have to understand what he/she is doing, but the trainee describes the imagination precisely to his/her own body during the performance.

2. Integrated sense of the body

The chief method which enables the integrated sense of the body is called Activation.

A)     Activation

Activation is an exercise by imagination. Trainee lies on his/her back. It would be better to close eyes, especially for the beginners. First of all, you listen to sound which is surrounding your body in order to get an image of yourself located in the space. Next, you imagine the parts of your body one by one from the fingers of your feet. The imagination climbs up from feet to shoulders through torso, goes to fingers of hands, returns to neck and reaches head. When the image arrived at the head, it returns to the feet again through your spine. The most important thing is that when you imagine the parts of your body, the images of the parts have been accumulated. You try not to forget every previous image, when you imagine the next part. After repeating the cycle of the imagination several times to confirm the accumulation of the images, you imagine as if your body is floating like 1cm up from the floor. This floating body-image supports the coincidence between the images and the physical senses of the body. When the sense of the body is activated by this work, one would be able to feel that the body is lapped by a thin membrane. It would be a sign of the integrated sense of the body.

B)     Stretching : Dialogue

Dialogueis an original stretching created by Ryuzo Fukuhara to support to gain the integrated sense of the body. It combines yoga, Butoh dance method, Noguchi gymnastic and massage for athlete. It is focusing on using gravity (trainee’s own weight) and the floor without unnecessary tension (muscle force) of the body, to learn the way to release the body by an inner conversation between the body and the mind.

3. Retroactive recognition

The dancer recognizes every set of motions in the performance retroactively in this approach of dance. He/she does not attach to the fixed future movements, but continuously recognizes the most closest past motions (what has it been done) by concentrating the present with sensations from the environment which is incessantly changing. The dancer recognizes his/her own motion neither as divided movements of the parts of the body nor an assembly of separated motions, but comprehends it as one whole, varied a shape in motion. He/she fixes the present motion by sense-dance to send it to the past, the motion is as reaction from the motives outside and inside him/herself. The stimuli to which the dancer reacts can be not only tangible things outside the body but also subjective visualizations. One of basic training to get the sense of retroactive recognition is Bisoku.

Bisoku – Slow movement

The name “Bisoku” is a Japanese word, means subtle speed. This is an exercise for making slow movement which requires total body awareness. The exercise makes the trainee aware of the process of the moves from one position to another, every change of the body weight and shifting the balance. The beginning is lying position on the floor and finishing position is standing. We decide the time from the beginning till the end for 7 minutes. The trainee senses the length of time in the body. The body-time-counting is a part of retroactive recognition. The moves to stand should be as simple as possible and less force in muscles. Bisoku exercise would be good to accompany with Activation.

- SUMMARY OF CONTENT DESCRIPTION (max 60 words; for publishing)                    

“Seeds of Dance-Phenomenological approach to dance” is a series of methods which focuses on making dancer, as well as non-dancer obtain sharpen sensitivity to communicate with the environment in the performance, and to strengthen his/her imaginations to master own body. It has been inspired by Phenomenology, which Edmund Husserl set forth its theory and Maurice Merleau-Ponty had pursued with the concept of “the body” as an existence between the subject and the object.

- SHORT BIOGRAPHY (max 60 words for publishing (if co-taught all in all max 60 words)

Born in 1965 in Japan. Fukuhara started his carrier as a dancer after attending Butoh workshop led by Semi-maru from the group Sankaijuku in 1987. In 1991 Fukuhara joined the Butoh dance group Maijuku directed by Min Tanaka. From 2000 onwards, Fukuhara moved to Europe. In 2006, he was awarded the 2nd prize of solo-dance contest at 11Masdanza - the International Contemporary Dance Festival in Canary Islands, Spain. In 2010, he was invited to Arsenale della Danza as a guest teacher of dance master class in La Biennale di Venezia. Fukuhara got the status of the independent cultural workers from Ministry of Culture in Slovenia in 2011. Now he is teaching dance as a guest teacher at Asian and African study course in the Faculty of Arts, University of Ljubljana, Slovenia 

- AIMED AT WHO (AND HOW MANY PEOPLE MIN /MAX?)

Dancer, choreographer, non dancer, actor and dance teacher, minimum 10, maxmum 40

-  TIME REQUEST            2hours                                                                                                                                                         

- TECHNICAL REQUIREMENTS (audio, beamer etc):                  non                                                                                                                                                                 

- SPACE NECESSITY (studio size etc): It depends on the number of the participant, a participant needs at least 2 square meter.