Training
suriashi
Suriashi (摺り足) is a form of displacement keeping the feet always in contact with the ground, just sliding them. As a body workout, the posture with low hips and sliding knees bent sharpens the perception of the intermediate space between external space and internal feelings. Suriashi enables an altered state of consciousness where there is an emptying of the gaze and a direct relationship with the central part of the body.
Training the various imagery compositions through suriashi activates a dilated internal time, increasing bodily perceptions.
The essence of walking is not just transferring through physical space and time, but transforming yourself in and between different dimensions. Butoh is metamorphosis. The ash walk, developed by Tatsumi Hijikata, automatically implies this type of walk.
Walk like a pillar of ash. Any sudden movement and you will dissipate. Kayo Mikami states that the column of ash is standing and ready to collapse. This physical state is the state we must be in in Butoh, a state of inevitability. How can we change the perception of time through walking? How to create an eternity in the present?
water body
Developed by Michizo Noguchi (1914-1998), Noguchi Taiso is a bodywork method that approaches the body as a “bag of water in which bones, muscles and viscera float”. In Noguchi Taiso, the weight of our existence (bones, blood, viscera, thoughts, emotions) in relation to gravity is what generates infinite possibilities of movement.
In practices we look at nature, lines, spirals, waves, gravity and weight to explore how to stand, walk, fall, crawl and roll.
We tend to use more effort than necessary to move around. Noguchi Taiso is a discipline of movement that serves to evoke a body effortlessly, using the fluidity of water to do so. Gravity is not fought, but embraced.
In the 1970s and 1980s, young dancers and students of Butoh learned Noguchi Taiso and began to use it in their training. Sankaijuku, led by Ushio Amagatsu, was one of them.