past – present – future
We get our inspiration from the eight editions of eX..it! before us. Honouring their ways and their practice through ours.
Every edition, like them, we will choose a theme to work with. A common ground, a trigger for questions to arise and dances to spring, to focus creativity. This theme will guide the creation process and let it grow into what has to become.
In addition, we offer a series of questions that are necessary for the current butoh paradigm.
BIG QUESTIONS for the first week.
INTERTWINED: butoh trough cultures and generations
We are currently experiencing a generational change in the international Butoh scene, it is now more than 60 years since its birth, and the number of dancers who didn’t have contact with its original sources is increaasing. Butoh lovers have spread this style around the world and many artists have embraced its principles. Butoh dance has flourished in a multitude of different cultures and has merged with a multitude of different styles.
Specifically, we will focus on the transformation of butoh dance over the years.
We are interested in knowing what has been the transformation that butoh dance has had on your artistic and personal vision of the performing arts and the arts in general. We want to find out how butoh dance has evolved in your own socio-cultural idiosyncrasies, what themes are addressed and what forms emerge when applying butoh dance principles in your art and in your environment.
In three simple questions:
How has butoh adapted to your culture?
How has the artistic manifestation of butoh evolved in your culture?
How is it similar to or different from the butoh you observe in other societies/cultures?
BIG THEME for the second week
A world at war
Wherever I look there is war. There is war in the world, there is war in my country, there is war in my city, there is war in my house. Even my body is at war.
There are 194 countries in the world and more than 50 active wars at any given moment. Half of our society is at war. And the other life seems to live in total despair. There are also an uncountable number of non-armed conflicts, everywhere. Fighting is still the solution we embrace in any given conflict. A solution that only brings us deeper down the hole.
During history, our technological evolution has improved our means of fighting. Human creativity has served the development of means of destruction until an absurd level. We have the power to destroy life on the planet.
We don’t need more improvement to empower destruction. We need creativity to emancipate from its slavery to a military-based society. We need other dreams for imagination. Others values for education. We need a shift of paradigm. We need art, creation and imagination to dismiss any mission of destruction of life.
Art gives us the opportunity to be conscious of the beauty of life, a consciousness needed for a change. A change our society needs to evolve, not to improve. An evolution our species needs to survive, that life needs to survive.
Give birth to something new, something we can’t conceive, a dream we can’t imagine, a world full of power, beauty and peace.