contrasting stillness
How to be still? Different qualities of stillness – relaxed, alert, tense. How many degrees of tension or body quality can be employed while standing in the same neutral position? What substances fill the body frame to give it a particular quality? This term Cafe Reason are exploring contrasts and this was my opening class. Can you contrast one stillness with another type of stillness? Can you read your partner’s stillness and respond with a contrasting reflection of it? As a more obvious contrast I put on the loudest, fastest, most upbeat music I could find. I loved walking around watching the pairs fighting to stay still. Part of Butoh is so much about being able to pause or be quiet so the smallest movement can be appreciated and expanded. This was an attempt to help us find a way of being still which was not about ‘not moving’ but being still in different ways.
I’m looking forward to exploring more senses of contrast from darkness to light, sound and silence.