PTE Training Hub - Winter Session

A free professional development opportunity for emerging and established theatre artists

Butoh Body Freedom - An Intermodal Approach
Instructor: Tanja Faylene Woloshen

In Person at PTE

6-weeks

Sundays January 14 - February 18, 2024

12:30pm- 2:30pm

Maximum Participants: 14


What can movement reveal? How can we deepen our relationships with self, character, kin, place, and space through movement? How can we discover freedom of expression? Butoh Body Freedom- An Intermodal Approach, will explore these questions and more.

Each session will include a guided warmup to build clarity and strength in the body, a few Butoh dance/ Contemplative movement inspired exercises to explore range of expression and concentration, followed by a prompt for lengthy embodied investigations. Participants will explore (re)creating narratives (self or character development) through movement improvisation. Within each session, time and space will be given for reflective writing or drawing, to further layer and deepen perception.

Participants should wear clothing to enable ease of expression, bring water to drink, as well as a notebook or paper, writing utensils, and pencil crayons.

Barefoot or indoor soft shoes/sneakers are encouraged.


Butoh Dance

Butoh Dance is a global dance theatre form that engulfs a range of activities, techniques and motivations originating in Japan, post WWII, and inspired by German Expressionism. The art form is difficult to define and constantly evolving, with signatures of playfulness, sensuality, and the grotesque.


Contemplative Movement

Contemplative Movement is an embodied relation with spirit or a meta picture. Movement is slower, mindful, and reflective. Contemplative movement can be simple, radical, and transformative, developing range for deep concentration, by quieting the “daily” mind.


ABOUT TANJA FAYLENE WOLOSHEN

An independent dance artist from and currently creating on Treaty 1 Territory, Tanja Faylene Woloshen (she/they), has performed and studied across NA, EU, and SE Asia. With decades of experience in dance and embodied arts, recent activities include the creation and performance of “Cat’s Cradle”, for the Waking Death Series in Lethbridge, AB, and the filming of “Field of Desire" for an upcoming dance short; creation and performance of “Beautiful Loser", for Art Holm; National Dance Education Assoc. Conf. Presenter; Dance Studies Assoc. Conf. Presenter; One Trunk Theatre's "Western Chronicle"- choreographer; and "Memorials for Lost Bodies"- death studies in performance research & performance with Happy Phantoms Collective. www.tanjafaylenewoloshen.org