It is not every day that Nicosia gets a visit from a practitioner of one of the most otherworldly art forms to emerge from the twentieth century. On 5 and 6 July, Dance House Lefkosia is hosting a two-day Butoh workshop led by Maki Watanabe, a Japanese dancer and teacher based in Paris who has spent three decades immersed in this singular, deeply physical form of movement.
What is Butoh?
For the uninitiated, Butoh is a form of contemporary Japanese dance that resists easy description. It emerged in Japan in the late 1950s as a radical departure from both Western dance traditions and classical Japanese performance. Slow, visceral, often unsettling, it is less concerned with technical virtuosity than with states of being, with the body as a site of transformation, memory and raw sensation. It draws on imagery, internal experience and a heightened awareness of space and presence to take both performer and observer somewhere that conventional dance rarely reaches.
Who is Maki Watanabe?
Watanabe was born in Sendai, Japan, and came to Butoh in 1995 after an initial training in contemporary jazz dance. She was introduced to the form by three of its most significant figures: Kazuo Ohno, Masaki Iwana and Mari Kazue. She has lived in Paris since 1998, where she has created numerous Butoh performances and choreographic works, collaborated with musicians and filmmakers, and appeared in works by choreographers including Gyohei Zaitsu, Naomi Moth and Katy Roulaud. She has led Butoh workshops in France, Brazil, Congo and Belgium. Nicosia is her next destination.
What the workshop involves
The two-day workshop will explore movement and dance as a sensory language, one capable of connecting bodies, images and space in ways that go beyond the purely physical. Watanabe will guide participants through a range of exercises designed to open up new forms of presence and perception. No previous dance experience is required. The workshop is open to anyone with an interest in movement, dance, embodied awareness or simply curiosity about a form they have never encountered before.
It will close on a convivial note, with a sake tasting kindly offered by the Embassy of Japan in Nicosia.
Where and how to register
The workshop takes place at Dance House Lefkosia, 25 Parthenon Street, Agios Andreas, Nicosia. Places are limited and registration is required via the Dance House Lefkosia website at dancehouselefkosia.com. For further information, contact info@dancehouselefkosia.com or call +357 22780960.
