PARIP 2005

International Conference | 29 June - 03 July 2005

Whelan: John | UK

PARIP 2005 ABSTRACT- Naoko Noshiro and John C. Whelan

Naoko and I collaborated on a performance in Tokyo in August of 2004. Naoko is a Butoh dancer with her own company in Tokyo. I am actor and physical theatre trained performer originally from Dublin, Ireland. We proposed a 'devising' or practical creative process over a week then a one off live performance using the elements we had found at Peppers Gallery space in Ginza, Tokyo.

The initial idea for this collaboration came from an aspect of my PhD by PAR. I am exploring physical memory and physical history in defining an embodied epistemology and further pedagogical model for plastic arts training. Using auditory, visual and kinaesthetic stimuli in devising original performance I am seeking to explore the relationship of these external sensory stimuli of 'creative environments' in accessing subjective performer physical history and physical memory to create subjective embodied awareness leading to performance research outcomes.

The specific aspect I wanted to explore and initially suggested to Naoko was the kinaesthetic stimulus of sites, spaces and the visual and auditory stimuli of the city, in this case Tokyo. So literally sites, spaces and sounds, which occur in and around the city act as stimuli, which the performers body reacts to producing movement. Certain movement sequences, patterns, shapes and reactions are kept, documented and refined. They are repeated and physically learned then randomly sequenced and reproduced as a movement score in performance. Use of video and ambient sound recorded on location at sites of influence, were further used as part of the creative sensory environment in the live performance.

This is a performers subjective sensory experience of and reaction to a City environment, communicated largely through movement. The interest was in devising and producing an organic performance with no 'a priori' aesthetic postulates. To explore if what is all around us in terms of sensory information can be harnessed and used as stimuli to evoke physical reactions and movement in the  process of creating original work.

I felt from my Western understanding of Butoh that the emphasis in creating work is placed on the subjective performers body as a site of memory and experience producing idiosyncratic and subjective performances. I viewed performances from Hijikata Tatsumi and Kazuo Ono while in Tokyo and felt that Butoh resembles certain more formal forms of dance the way an adult handwriting resembles the handwriting of a 5-year-old child learning the perfect shape and clarity of the alphabet. That is, they are both writing letters and words but look so vastly different because adult handwriting, like Butoh, has been subjectified and bent into the shapes and patterns of the persons experience, personality and style.

Although coming from very different cultures and positions artistically Naoko and I seemed to find a common thread related to Butoh philosophy and practice i.e. the Body as a creative site of exploration, memory, experience, knowledge and expression inscribed by the environment it moves in. The intentions for me were twofold; firstly that I wanted to further explore an embodied form of knowledge in practice and secondly that I wanted to explore any commonalities between my thinking, research and practice and what I understood of Butoh.