BUTOH & PERFORMER TRAINING
A weekend workshop with Natsuko Kono (JP/DE) & WilL Dickie (UK)

What can Butoh offer us as performers?

For her first visit to Liverpool, Butoh dancer and choreographer Natsuko Kono joins Liverpool-based performance maker WilL Dickie for a weekend exploring how Butoh practice can help us become stronger, more sensitive and more imaginative performers.

Natsuko and WilL first met through Butoh in London in 2006 and have since developed careers grounded in physical approaches to performance. Both have danced extensively with the late Butoh master Tadashi Endo and since 2022 have developed a shared teaching practice inspired by his legacy. Teaching in Berlin, Poland & now Liverpool.

Across the weekend we will explore how Butoh can cultivate a greater sensitivity to ourselves, others and the space around us. Through psychophysical training & improvisation we will work with the body as a source of imagination, allowing unexpected qualities and images to emerge and discovering ways of moving beyond our habitual responses. The work will guide each of us towards committed and radical states of presence.

Drawing on over 25 years of shared experience across Butoh, theatre, choreography, martial arts, Suzuki training, Feldenkrais and other body-based practices, Natsuko and WilL create a rigorous but supportive environment for exploration. The workshop is open to performers and movers from different backgrounds and levels of experience, including dance, theatre, live art, martial arts and somatic practices – as well as anyone curious about performance, creativity and expressiveness.

Natsuko Kono is a Japanese Butoh dancer, choreographer and teacher based in Germany. She has worked with leading Butoh artists including Yumiko Yoshioka, Katsura Kan and Tadashi Endo. Her solo work has been presented at festivals across Europe, including Paris Butoh Festival, Dublin Butoh Festival, Moving Bodies Festival and BIG – Butoh International Gathering. She has taught Butoh internationally across Europe and Japan and founded Butoh Initiative in 2016 as a long-term training project. Since 2015 she has also performed Anna Homler’s Breadwoman at music festivals across Europe.

https://natsuko-kono.wixsite.com/urbanbutoh

WilL Dickie is a Liverpool-based performance maker, director and Feldenkrais practitioner. His work draws on over 20 years of psychophysical performer training, including Butoh with Tadashi Endo, Kalaripayattu with Phillip Zarrilli and the Suzuki-based Nobbs Suzuki Praxis with John Nobbs and Jacqui Carroll. Recent directing and movement work includes The Secret Garden at Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre, Clubhouse Dusk at WAAPA in Australia and Hanna Tuulikki’s Echo in the Dark. His recent solo White Sun toured the UK and internationally, while Canning Town, created with Fabiola Santana, won dance-film awards in Portugal, Scotland and Romania. He has been teaching performers, professional artists and students in the UK and internationally since 2010.

www.willdickie.co.uk

Bursary place available pending application - please contact will@willdickie.co.uk for more details.