pellucid penetralia

A structured improvisation of butoh and music

October 2006

Center on Contemporary Art (CoCA), Seattle

movement by:

• the Death Posture (Vanessa Skantze & Alex Haverfield)
• Sheri Brown

sound by:

• Tatsuya Nakatani - drums, percussion
• Bill Horist - guitar
• Tom Swafford - violin

pellucid penetralia , a sexy alliteration that connotes a translucent entry into secret places. In my many years of doing butoh/voice improvisation with musicians, I have experienced a kind of willed possession in allowing the sound to move in and create movement, mutating the flesh in the way butoh imagery does, the dancer becomes rather than depicts the energies and entities of the music and its attendant spirits. This process creates a deep intertwining between sound and flesh and also manifests for the audience a visceral physical experience of the music which impacts them in a profound synaesthesia. Butoh dance erupts in the flesh and utilizes all psychosomatic spirit longing to transmit energy. One is both dancer and, in Antonin Artaud's words, an acrobat of the heart. This evening is a continuum, beginning with three one on one improvisations dancer/musician, and then one by one partners returning into all six of us improvising together.

for more information, contact vanessa@deathposture.org