My interest in butoh is well known. There are yearly butoh festivals in San Francisco and New York, regular performances in Seattle, a concentration in Germany and scattered outposts like Hawaii, Vancouver, Chicago, London and elsewhere. Tokyo-Yokohama is still a center. Portland had events or workshops about every other year, but that is changing with the emergence of a few teachers here and a new studio at Disjecta.
The Water in the Desert Festival channels ritual and ecopsychology through butoh inspired by Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. The event takes place in Peninsula Park's original Portland rose garden.
There are stage performances from 1PM-6:30. At 1:00PM - M.One, spoken word/trip hop/electronica; 2:15 - The World’s Greatest Ghosts, power pop; 3:15 - Miriam Burke: Retna Pamudya, javanese court dance; 3:30 - TeetH: Rash, contemporary dance/performance; 4:15 - a zombie rock opera; 5:30 - Adam Hurst with Dominique Garcia, cello/vocals/guitar.
All afternoon there are children's events, face painting, juggling, clowning, bubbles and origami.
At 6:30PM there is a ritual procession to the theater space in the park. It's a time to meditate on water, beautiful landscape and our part in it.
At 7PM butoh artists Harupin-Ha perform. Koichi Tamano worked with butoh's founder Hijikata between 1965 and 1972. Hijikata completed his early period in 1968 with the seminal performance Revolt of the Flesh. Meeting artist Yoko Ashikawa in 1966, he began the second phase, post 1968, focused on butoh images of the child and soft movements, in which the body is imagined to be supported by invisible strings, allowing it to move without effort. This produced a more sublime movement completely different from his early shocking, grotesque and risky phase. By 1972, with Hijikata's encouragement, many of his students created their own companies, such as Dairakudakan, and Tamano's Harupin-ha. In 1978 Koichi moved to Berkeley, with his performance partner and wife Hiroko, who had worked with Hijikata's all woman unit, Hakutobo. In the Bay Area they ran the legendary Country Station sushi restaurant in the Mission. (They have since relocated to Noe with a much more low key Tamasei Sushi) Many Harupin-ha performances include a dancer performing in a two meter clear plastic bubble, rolling at the performer walks. It is extremely rare to see performers here with direct connection to butoh's founder, especially bridging his critical artistic periods.
At 7:30PM, a performance inspired A Midsummer Night's Dream by the festival's creator, Mizu Desierto, begins in the park's rose gardens. Mizu studied with the Tamanos, butoh's cofounder, Kazuo Ohno and Mexican shamanist butoh artist, Diego Pinon. Ohno is known for his compassionate humanist gestalt and works primarily with images of birth, death, the mother, babies and the flower. Pinon is known for awakening movement based on psychodrama drawn from each dancer's own experiences. Mizu excels in creating performances involving multiple dancers with fantastic surreal costuming. She splits her time between Portland's forests and Arizona's deserts, drawing inspiration from each landscape equally. Mizu Desierto is water desert translated to Japanese.
All this is completely free. The evening performances should not be missed.
The Tamanos teach a participatory workshop Friday July 25 from 1PM-5. No experience is necessary, come ready to move. Recommended and extremely reasonably priced. Details here.
At Penninsula Park, corner of N Albina and Rosa Parks Way. 1PM-10ish. Free
