Butoh Dance // Somatic Alchemy

A weekend retreat with Paul Michael Henry and Blanche Mulholland

** This Retreat is now full **

Friday 1st - Sunday 3rd July 2022

Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire

This workshop is for anyone: dancers, movers, therapists, and those who want to deepen their connection to their body, to nature and to the cosmos. We’ll be combining Butoh, the Japanese Dance of Darkness, with the meditative and therapeutic principles of Somatic Alchemy over a three day residential retreat geared towards plugging ourselves back into our bodies, and through our bodies, the universe at large.

Butoh is an immersive dance form originating from Japan and dubbed the Dance of Darkness (Ankoku Butō)." Paul Michael Henry’s Butoh method, titled The Dreaming Body, starts from the premise that the body is always already dreaming, even during the dream of being awake. Once we can feel into the dream of our bodies by releasing tension and befriending gravity, we can learn to change it by blurring distinctions between inside and outside, dream and reality, and using images and a process of ‘self vanishing’ to activate new dreams from the unconscious and from nature. Michael’s work is useful for performance training for dancers, actors and musicians, but also for personal exploration. His workshops are open to all with no prior experience necessary, and he is keen to welcome those of all body types, abilities and needs.

Somatic Alchemy is an embodied, meditative and therapeutic approach to movement and dance that is deeply informed by the principles of Somatic Experiencing (Peter Levine's Body-Oriented Trauma Healing), as well as being grounded in an exploration of nature and the elements. The body, as an alchemical vessel, is the portal through which profound transformation as well as gentle healing can occur on our journey towards being fully our embodied selves. Blanche Mulholland will bring this approach into contactwith Butoh, allowing us to deeply immerse in ourselves from the inside out, resulting in dance, expression and self revelation.

Where

This retreat will take place in a beautiful studio with underfloor heating overlooking the woods ~ this space will form the sacred container for our inner explorations. You will be able to enjoy the cedarwood hot tub under starry skies, an outdoor fire and infrared sauna, as well as time and space for contemplation and communion with nature.Accommodation with different sleeping options and delicious vegetarian meals are included for theweekend retreat. Places are limited for this retreat so book on early if this calls you.

DATES:July 1st 5pm - July 3rd 5pm 2022

LOCATION: Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire

PRICE: £300 (£100 deposit to confirm your place)

BOOKING & ENQUIRIES: blanche@somatic-alchemy.co.uk

About the teachers

Paul Michael Henry

MIchael is a Scottish / Irish performance artist, dancer and musician. His work is informed by Butoh dance, punk rock and ritual, and is performed all over the world. Michael’s themes are political, social & spiritual, dealing with love, neglect of the body, destruction of the environment and atrophy of the soul in consumerist society. He is also Artistic Director and creator of UNFIX, an evolving and experimental festival platforming ecologically committed performance, dance, music, film and discussion. UNFIX is intended as a contribution to the waking up of the human species to our predicament in an age of climate change, massive inequality and crazy consumerism. It is based in Glasgow and is ongoing there and in New York City and Tokyo. Michael has trained and performed over many years with the most respected Butoh masters in Europe and Japan, including: including Yoshito Ohno, Yukio Waguri, Masaki Iwana, Kayo Mikami, Seisaku & Yuri, Atsushi Takenouchi, Tadashi Endo, Yumiko Yoshioka, Imre Thormann, Moe Yamamoto, Yuko Kaseki and Gyohei Zaitsu. HIs own dance work is platformed on multiple Butoh festivals around the world. The Dreaming Body workshops are a synthesis of these experiences and his own research.

www.paulmichaelhenry.com 

www.unfixfestival.com

Blanche Mulholland

Blanche is a Somatic Experiencing Practitioner (Body-Oriented TraumaTherapy), as well as a principle teacher with Still Flowing Yoga Teacher Training since 2013. She loves facilitating deep immersions into our embodied experience so people can experience movement that is internally guided, intuitive, creative and liberating. Blanche’s classes are for those of you interested in slowing down, meeting all layers of your internal experience with compassion, and discovering the creative movement, embodied imagination and sensation that emerge from a 'deep listening' within. Somatic movement is not about performance, but rather a profoundly therapeutic and liberating expression of the un-lived dreams of our unconscious as it emerges through form. This work is about alchemising our suffering into beauty - not culture's ideas of beauty which are more about image and appearance, but true beauty that comes from a deep encounter with life and death in all its mystery.