Slow: A Public Butoh Workshop

A Platform2 Public intervention, 2010

Downtown Crossing shopping area, Boston, MA

DURATION: 90 minutes

Performed on March 18, 2010, Platform2 invited choreographer, Alissa Cardone, to give a public Butoh workshop outside during the lunch hour. The economy was slowing down. And through this piece, Platform2 wondered, “could we also slow down?”. Butoh, a meditative dance form developed in Japan after World War II that incorporates actions performed in hyper-slow movement. The dance form came out of a time of crisis, cultural change, and challenges to traditional forms of authority. So, in the wake of the economic downturn in the U.S., it seemed an ideal medium to explore that issue.  So, during a week-day lunch hour we invited participants to experiment with moving slowly in the middle of the street and the middle of the fast-paced business environment of Boston’s Downtown Crossing.

SLOW: a public butoh workshop from Andi Sutton on Vimeo.

Alissa Cardone lead exercises drawn from the work of Min Tanaka’s “Body Weather” and butoh dancer and eurythmist, Akira Kasai.(only short vimeo clip) The group worked individually, in partners, and as a group, setting up potent contradictions between internal and external pace and focus while the lunchtime crowd flowed around us.