Body Weather

1st & 2nd December 2023

Taller de Body Weather

Body Weather (body climatology) is an exhaustive comprehensive practice of training and performance that investigates the intersections of the body and its environment. It provides a fundamental physical training for any dancer, actor or performer, or for any non-professional person who wants to know his/her body in depth, putting special emphasis on physical articulation and on individual patterns of movement. This training requires from each participant to make a complete review of the body and movement in different and changing environments. There are no previous requirements to participate.

Since we are born, our body is an entity in constant change. Naturally, in the first years of our lives, we receive the information through our most basic senses. The external climatic changes, the internal rhythms, the biological time and the feeling of the real time, etc… All this information remains engraved in our corporeal memory and with the years we start to forget, and we loose some of it.

To be listening through the feelings and the open pores of our skin, with sensitivity, means that we can pay attention to ourselves, to others and our environment. To repeat a body workout gives us the opportunity to get to know different aspects of our body structure and nature: the bones, the muscles, nerves and also the mind and sensations. To reexamine our patterns of movement, to listen to the world outside from our skin, to re-learn how and what produces the movement and in the end to understand the body as a global entity composed by many independent parts, these are the objectives.

In this workshop I will spend some time on the regular training that I practice and teach regularly since 1986. A personal training that is inspired by the Body Weather Laboratory in Tokyo created by Min Tanaka, teacher and butoh dancer in 1973 with whom I trained.

The workshop is composed of 3 parts:

1. What we call “MB” (mind and body, muscles and bones): a rigorous training that seeks a balance between mind and body, muscles and bones through dynamics and rhythm. Step by step, they movements are built organically demanding every time more complexity, attention and listening skills, especially when two or more movements have to be done simultaneously. The habits and ways of doing of each one will appear. We will observe them, investigate them and expand the limits. Talking with the articulations and the muscles, with very small movements, carrying consciousness to the muscle fiber, the body will modify the gravity and will dance. It’s an energetic work, dynamic and rhythmic movement that is performed with music and that goes towards the observation of kinesthetic sensibility and the potential of the coordination of the body in movement, with a special emphasis on the relationship between mind and body; it develops the strength, the resistance, the flexibility and the connection with the earth.

2. Manipulation: series of stretching and specific relaxation with awareness of breathing and alignment. Practiced in pairs and also individually, interchanging active and passive roles. More than being a stretch between two people, it establishes a relationship while leaving oneself in the hands of the other in order to arrive to places where we wouldn’t arrive alone. It is performed with a deep breath where the partner presses and stretches various parts of the body. We will work from the skin, the facial muscles, the musculature and the joints, and the partner will help us to go beyond our limits through breathing and rhythm.

3. The exploration: designed to sharpen the focus and develop what we understand usually as the expression through the body. The work encompasses a sensitive training and the discovery of movement through images. Movement through the corporeal image, always searching for the authentic flame and the origin of the image. Not with a fixed form but with an existence that is always kept in motion and always searching and searching. Multiple exercises to develop sensitivity, listening and imagination skills. Exercises of perception, individual work and in pairs. There is also some work of letting the other move us, of working closed eyes in order to access a more precise listening, and the study of time, both the inner and outer time.

Dancer and choreographer.

A tireless explorer of the languages of the body and dance, in 1985 he became acquainted with Butoh dance. He travelled to Tokyo, where he studied and worked with Kazuoh Ohno and Min Tanaka, world-renowned masters. From 1986 to 1995 he danced with Mai-Juku, a dance company directed by Min Tanaka. In his long career he has collaborated with artists from different disciplines, among others: Feliu Formosa, a poet with whom he has been working since 1990; Rosa Muñoz, with whom he founded the company Raravis and with whom he has worked intensely for years on creation and training. He has collaborated with musicians Agustí Fernández and Joan Saura, two important figures in the world of improvisation and music, with Miguel Poveda and Silvia Pérez Cruz, with the dance company Mal Pelo and Àngels Margarit, and with Hisako Horikawa and Oguri, the latter a Japanese dancer with whom he has worked closely since 2012. For over 35 years he has alternated his work as a creator with that of a teacher. He has taught classes and led workshops around the world and since 2005 he has been a professor at the Institut del Teatre de Barcelona.

Critics’ Prize 2021 for the best Solo de Dansa for the show “Absències”.

National Dance Award of Catalonia 2003. For his artistic career and for the show “El bufó sota la tempesta” in collaboration with the poet Feliu Formosa.

Applause Award 2001- Premi FAD Sebastià Gasch de les Arts Esceniques, together with Agustí Fernández, for the show “A modo de esperanza”.

Award “Al pas de la Tarda 92” of Radio Nacional de España for his multidisciplinary shows in collaboration with Feliu Formosa.

Dates:
1st and 2nd December 2023

Times:
Friday 16h – 20h
Saturday 10h-14h & 15h – 19h

Price: 130€

– 15% discount if you enrol one month before the course’s starting date.

– 10% discount if you have the Carnet de Biblioteques de la Diputació de Barcelona, the Carnet Jove (the discount includes also any card member of the European Youth Card network) or if you are a performing arts student.

– 15% discount (permanent) for Moveo students and former students of the regular courses.

If you want to take advantatge of any of our discounts,
contact us and we will let you know how.

-These discounts are not valid in combination with one another-