Thu, 19 May 2005

bury me in a coffin made of the bones of my enemies, deux
In my spare time, I have been working off my community service (long story, I’ll come back to it) by working with the elderly down at Methusela’s Empire Nursing Home. Rather than have them do bullshit demeaning activities, we discussed it for a while and decided the best option would be to develop a butoh troupe. Aside from being the most important dance movement of the 20th century, butoh is ideal for the elderly, as it depends less on the kind of muscular rigor favored by American performers and instead works with the minimal essence of the performer’s body and the intelligence it carries. So we studied Tatsumi Hijikata and Min Tanaka and did a lot of movement work ebfore working on ways of bringing the daily lives of the performers into the work: the last thing we wanted to do was ape old-school butoh performances. All of which is to say that tonight’s performance, our first, scared the living piss out of the nurses and orderlies, particularly when Greta slipped in a line from Marat/Sade. Heheheh.
(12:12.05.19.2005) [/ana] #