*PLEASE NOTE: The information and commentary I share in this forum is based on the notion of asking questions to open thoughts. I am NOT presenting myself as an authority by any means! I find value in the possibility of expansion through discussion—without necessarily feeling the need to affix people to the thoughts they present.

Flexibility in the mind.

Openness in the heart.

Gentleness in the hand.

 --nicole

 There are a few professional dancers/choreographers who have limited vision or limited hearing and work with various able-bodied companies. Around the world, several mixed ability or integrated dance companies exist. It is more rare to find dance companies that concentrate on one type of difference, for example only visually limited, only hearing impaired, or wheelchair bound. Some of the integrated dance companies indicate concern and interest to participate in the international contemporary dance art scene, whereas others appear content with local, social impact.

 These themes of global/local, art-house/social, apply to the context in which the dances are presented to the public. One might find similar treatment of culturally specific dance forms and public performance venues. Questions about what is culture dance vs. what is art dance include an examination of intention, audience, creator, time frame of reference, relevance, (money) etc.  One could speculate that public art-performance venues want contemporary works that speak to our times (therefore more ‘universal’=impact?) and are the result of a specific individual’s vision.  Oftentimes, culturally specific dances are the result of a collective creation (therefore ‘specific’ audience=less impact?) and thought to exist in a nebulous, suspended-time cloud. What are the differences in volume and value depending on whose voice is heard and where? 

 Naturally, there is bleeding, blending, challenge, and innovation within these points. I am only sharing various questions that sprout within my research.

 Currently there are a few particular contemporary dancer/choreographers who have projects that resonant in some way with my desire to work with visually impaired people (VIPs). They include: Saburo Teshigawara/KARAS, Goo Say Ten, Marie Chouinard, Natsu Nakajima. Kazuo Ohno, Yoshito Ohno, Anna Halprin.

 Saburo Teshigawara: www.st-karas.com

PRELUDE FOR DAWN

Prelude for Dawn Creation for Blind Students.?This is a performance evolving from the continuous workshops Saburo Teshigawara has been doing with some blind students since October 2003.?Interested in their abilities, and how they feel and create space, Saburo Teshigawara is off on a journey to meet with these not-yet-known possibilities. Apart from on-going workshops held at the KARAS Studio in Tokyo, a joint educational project called "S.T.E.P."(Saburo Teshigawara Education Project) has been initiated since 1995 with partners in the UK. In 2004 for Lille 2004, he created _Prelude for Dawn _- a performance evolving from a year-long workshop with visibly disabled students of special school, at the Opera de Lille.

Saburo Teshigawara first worked with blind students in an education project called "S.T.E.P." (Saburo Teshigawara Education Project) based in London. One of these participants, Stuart Jackson, worked with him in the group piece "LUMINOUS".

LUMINOUS

A group piece by Saburo Teshigawara/KARAS. Premiered in Tokyo March 2001, at Theatre Cocoon. The revised version was premiered in the summer, at the Aarhus Festival.

Throughout the whole piece, there is a search for the purity and essentials of movement through its relation with light and sound. How an invariant substance such as the existence of the human body and its movements, perceive, adapt, or change, depending on the variant information the optic array affords us in space, together with acoustic environment. This is also apparent in the stage apparatus, created with light and its scattered reflections, resonant or reverberating with sound, each influencing one another, providing a multiple atmosphere for the receptor, the dancer.

Compagnie Marie Chouinard: www.mariechouinard.com

bODY_rEMIX/gOLDBERG_vARIATIONS

Ballet in two acts:Created at the Venice Biennale’s International Festival of Contemporary Dance, Italy, 2005

In this new work by Marie Chouinard, the company’s ten dancers execute variations on the exercise of freedom. Often, the dancers appear on points: on one, two, and even four at a time. In a spectroscopy of the gesture, we also see them using different devices, crutches, rope, prostheses, horizontal bars, and harnesses, which at times liberate their movements, at others fetter it, and at still others create it. This use of accessories gives rise to unusual bodily shapes and gestural dynamics and opens onto a universe of meticulous and playful explorations in which solos, duos, trios and group work, in their labour, pleasure and invention, echo the human condition.

An aesthete beyond norms, Marie Chouinard presents her ideas on the way the indefinableness of the Other and the flagrancy of Beauty brush up against one another through an interpretation of Johann Sebastian Bach’s Goldberg Variations. Subtle and extravagant, sumptuous and wild, the work’s movements plumb the insoluble mystery of the body, of the living being.

Goo Say Ten: www.ne.jp/asahi/butoh/itto/method/adta21.htm

GooSayTen founder Morita Itto says of his art form; .In the most ideal and essential butoh performance, what the audience sees is not the dancer’s body but a non-materialized world as if the dancer’s body has become a prism allowing the audience to see something latent behind the performer. It is evidence of a return from a pilgrimage through the split parts of the self, and a recovery or creation of his/her wholeness.

 GooSayTen, which translates to an incidentally actualized Heaven, was founded in 1995 and has performed and offered movement workshops throughout Japan, Germany, Poland, Russia and the United States. GooSayTen’s founder, Morita, is also known as Kasai Toshiharu, Professor at Sapporo Gakuin University in Hokkaido, teaching behavioral and cognitive psychology and doing research into the mind-body relationship. His partner, Takeuchi Mika, works as a dance therapist at a day care program for the mentally disabled and together they blend psychology and therapeutic movement which make GooSayTen unique even among Butoh troupes

Natsu Nakajima

It is rather difficult to find specific info about Nakajima on-line. I have invited her to Chicago Sept.1-10, 2007 in order to teach a workshop, some classes, and an artist talk. Ms. Nakajima has been a primal force in butoh since the 1960's and continues to hold dynamic presence through her teaching, solo work, and company, Mutekisha. Much scholarship has lauded Nakajima for her cultivation of the feminine/feminist and spiritual/shaman. Her research brought butoh off the stage to a community of elderly, children, and people with disabilities to explore the intersections of the body, spirit, and community, with the creative

 Kazuo Ohno, Yoshito Ohno: www.kazuoohnodancestudio.com

Kazuo Ohno is over one hundred years old and made his last appearance on stage in January 2007. He has always offered the dance of his soul through his aging body to the public without vanity. His seventy-plus year old son, Yoshito Ohno, continues to support his father while teaching three classes per week in their home studio and performing on international stages. He is a prime example of (among other qualities) humble, dedicated service, patience, and generosity.

 Anna Halprin: www.annahalprin.org, www.tamalpa.org

US based luminary of the dance world has ushered in many innovations throughout her 80+ years. One of her many graces was the development of dance as a healing art after her own struggle with cancer, and the inclusion of non-dancers in community-based, dance-ritual events. Her daughter, Daria, created the Tamalpa Institute as a way to further and expand upon Anna’s approach of life with the arts.