Senses in Butoh
This term with Cafe Reason we are exploring the senses through Butoh and Butoh through the senses. Friday’s class was another interesting investigation. How do we move when we pay attention to a particular sense, how does each sense affect the quality of movement? How does it feel when you give primacy to a particular sense? What happens when we combine attention to two different senses. How does it look from the outside?
We noticed a few things. for example – the sense of touch can be received through the whole of the body whereas sight is received only through one part of the body. We can play with what we choose to focus on how big or small, close or wide our vision, how slow or fast we move our views but it is still through the eyes. What happens to the rest of the body? To address this we played with vision ‘eyes’ in different parts of the body- a familiar butoh technique, but it was interesting to shift from the two approaches to ‘sight’ and notice its affect on the body and the shift in quality of movement.
With listening we were reminded of a passive hearing and an active listening , again the ability to focus on particular sounds to receive and /or to respond. We also noticed how easy /tempting it was to ‘make’ sound instead of listen to what is there.