Reflections on Butoh: Timeless Form, at Studio 303
By Martin Blais | Workshop, November 20–24, 2023 | V2
As an actor, I know the temptation to want to get a scene right before I have even gone through it. The role has been prepared, the situation understood, an intention found. What remains is to play it. And sometimes, without realizing it, we begin to reproduce an idea of the result rather than discover what is happening with our scene partner.
From November 20 to 24, 2023, I took part in Butoh: Timeless Form, a workshop taught in English by Denise Fujiwara at Studio 303 in Montreal. Five four-hour mornings, open to artists from all disciplines, to explore form, the elements, and time through butoh. The work was based mainly on guided improvisation: verbal instructions, relatively few demonstrations, and a great deal of attention to what was happening in the body.
One question stays with me, and it connects directly to my work: how can genuine transformation happen when we already have our habits, our reflexes, and ways of doing things that work? The connections to acting that I develop here are my own reading of this training, from my perspective as an actor.
A form that keeps taking shape
The title of the workshop might suggest a search for forms to master. Denise’s approach instead opened up work on what appears, changes, and disappears. Form became an event in time, produced by the conditions the performer was exploring. This orientation was at the heart of the official workshop description.
This way of approaching movement requires remaining available. A position can be interesting, but as soon as I try to hold on to it because it seems successful, my attention shifts. I begin mentally watching what I am showing. I then risk losing contact with what made it appear in the first place.
For acting, that distinction seems essential to me. An emotion found in rehearsal can become a useful reference point. It can also become an image to reproduce. In Denise’s work, the instruction kept bringing us back to the experience underway, where something might still escape us.
Recognizing habits so they can be shifted
Part of our discussions concerned the self, that sense of being a person defined once and for all. Denise approached identity through habits of perception, thought, sensation, and action that continually reconstruct themselves. For the performer, this opened up a very concrete possibility: some of these habits can be observed, then changed.
I find this more useful than a general invitation to forget the ego. My habits have a body. They exist in the way I walk, in the tensions I hold, in the speed at which I respond to an impulse. They also influence the choices I believe are spontaneous.
The work therefore asked us to recognize what comes back easily and to try other organizations. For an actor, this is a doorway into character through physical experience. A change in the way weight is received or a movement is initiated can already alter the relationship to space and to others, before any psychological explanation is formulated.
Talking Wind: receiving precisely what arrives
The Talking Wind exercise made this availability particularly tangible. In pairs, one person gave the other a physical impulse, a kind of passage or contact that indicated a direction and an intensity. The partner had to let that information provoke the movement.
Precision was decisive. The contact had to convey a recognizable direction and pressure. The response began in the part of the body being touched, while the impulse was arriving. That detail changed everything: waiting until the contact was over before inventing a movement already gave interpretation time to replace sensation.
When a small impulse provoked a large reaction that had little connection to what had been given, Denise suggested repeating exactly the same contact. This repetition helped refine the receiving. The person guiding also learned about their partner: two bodies did not necessarily respond in the same way to a similar indication. Listening therefore moved in both directions.
The exercise then continued without a partner. We had to rediscover inwardly that relationship to the wind and let movement develop from that condition. The work with air could then become more specific: current, turbulence, density, heat, dryness, condensation. Each of these properties offered different material to explore.
I see a very direct connection here to listening onstage. I can know the line that is coming and still receive a new impulse from my partner. If I have already chosen my reaction, that information will have little room to act. Talking Wind trained precisely this capacity to let what arrives change what follows.
Staying occupied with the task
Throughout the exercises, Denise kept bringing us back to carrying out the task. Even when it seemed difficult or impossible to complete fully, we had to keep pursuing it with precision. The real effort, its limits, and the discoveries it produced were part of what others could watch.
This demand shifts the concern with looking good. If my attention is mainly being used to check whether the result is beautiful, clear, or convincing, part of the work stops. I compose the appearance of discovery. The task, on the other hand, keeps me occupied with something whose outcome remains open.
I recognize a very familiar difficulty from theatre here. After discovering a moment that feels right, we want to find it again the next day. The temptation is to reproduce its rhythm, its colour, and its expression. The workshop invited us to return to the conditions that make discovery possible, then accept that it may not happen again in exactly the same way.
Denise also encouraged us to take notes while discoveries were still fresh: to name a state, its qualities, the process explored, and the indications that had helped us enter it. It is a concrete way of preparing to return to the work. A few words can help recover a working condition without turning the form that appeared into a mandatory model.
This requires active attention. The proposition has to be respected, its effects observed, and the work continued within its constraints. Surprise becomes one possible consequence of that rigour.
Breaking down habitual movement
The physical work also involved developmental movement patterns that Denise connected to Body-Mind Centering. One coordination engaged both sides of the body symmetrically; another mainly engaged the same side; another connected opposite parts diagonally. We also explored different origins of movement: the head, the spine, the pelvis, a shoulder blade.
The instruction required us to search beyond the movement that came easily. Within a given organization, what possibilities were still left to discover? How did another initiation change the coordination of the whole? In this way, a familiar action could be broken down and we could see how many choices it already contained.
Walking became an especially rich field of observation. One instruction broke down the transfer of weight by successively bringing attention to the skin of the foot in contact with the floor, the muscles, and then the bones. We then had to keep that sensitivity while speeding up. An everyday action suddenly contained a sequence of perceptions that its usual speed made easy to miss.
In another exploration, we returned to our ordinary walk to identify its tensions. Denise suggested amplifying them before releasing them. A held shoulder, a less mobile joint, or a particular rhythm could reveal an unexpected presence. Observation came before correction, and the detour allowed us to feel differently the walk we returned to.
For building a character, this research seems valuable to me. It provides elements that can actually be experienced. I can observe what a new coordination changes in my presence, then let that experience feed the role. The body then contributes information that analysis alone might not have produced.
Earth, air, fire, and water as conditions
The elements ran through the week: earth, air, fire, water. The risk was to give them a personality too quickly or associate each one with a general emotion. It would have been easy to turn fire into an angry character and water into a gentle one, then perform that interpretation.
Denise brought the work back to the properties of the element and their physical consequences. Associations could be explored through three entry points: things, qualities, and processes. With air, that could include wind and fog as well as density, heat, turbulence, or evaporation. This way of organizing the material fed the imagination with propositions distinct enough to renew the movement.
Our discussions also distinguished inner intensity from its visible amplitude. One instruction asked us to maintain a very high intensity inside while limiting what appeared externally. The exploration was therefore not simply about reducing energy in order to move less. This difference interests me especially for the camera: it invites me to make more precise what is occupying me and to observe how much space I give it in the frame.
The discussions nevertheless added a nuance: a personal emotional association could have a place, depending on the intention and the choreographic context. The issue was knowing what we were looking for. An emotion chosen too quickly could impoverish the exploration of an element; elsewhere, that personal relationship could be part of the work. This flexibility avoids turning a useful instruction into an absolute rule.
I find in this a way of working that avoids deciding too quickly how large an emotion should be. The question becomes more concrete: what conditions are active, and what do they actually change?
Letting two forces coexist
One proposition brought two imaginary substances together in the same body: water and helium. In this physical fiction, one moved with weight and changes of shape, while the other tended to rise. We had to let both conditions act together, in proportions that could vary.
Denise clarified that paying attention to one did not make the other disappear. If the shape of the body changed, their distribution changed as well. This constraint prevented us from simply moving from an idea of heaviness to an idea of lightness. The performer had to sustain a relationship among several simultaneous forces.
For character work, I see this as a path toward ambivalence. We can want to move forward and feel something holding us back, welcome someone while retaining resistance. The exercise provides a physical terrain for exploring how two tendencies modify one another before choosing the words that might explain them.
Making room for the passage between two actions
Denise also used the term bardo to approach transitions. Within the workshop, she used it to explore the intermediate state between two events: a moment when the previous action stops and the next one has not yet been determined.
Stillness or work around breathing could create this passage. The interruption made what had just happened perceptible. It also made it possible to feel how strongly movement tends to continue on its own momentum, even when attention is no longer fully there.
Responsibility for these passages evolved over the course of the work. At first, Denise indicated when to change; later, the performers had to choose for themselves. A state could be interrupted while it was still working, before its expected development. The decision had to come from what was happening, while maintaining attention to the space, the others, and the composition.
Repetition was also subject to this discernment. Repeating a movement could create an intended effect, establish an expectation, or lead somewhere else. Denise invited us to perceive the reason for doing it. A rise in intensity followed by a peak and a decrease could become an automatic pattern; other durations and other cuts remained possible.
For me, this exploration gives weight to the silences in a scene. There are pauses we place because we know they will be effective. There are also moments when information we receive genuinely changes the possibility of continuing. In the second case, duration is built from what is happening.
What I retain most is this availability to the passage itself. Before launching the next action, it can sometimes be useful to perceive where the previous one has brought us. A new direction can then appear.
What I bring back to acting
This workshop gave me several concrete ways to question my automatisms: receiving an impulse precisely, shifting the origin of a movement, maintaining two imaginary conditions at once, choosing a transition. Presence required sensitivity, but also skill and discernment. We had to keep perceiving and deciding.
What resonates with me most is this relationship between preparation and availability. I can prepare the conditions of the acting with great care. I can know the text, the circumstances, and the trajectory of the scene. What remains is to make room for what the partner, the body, and the moment actually bring.
The transformation we were working with that week required this continuing attention. A form would appear, and then it could still change. That is the possibility I want to preserve in front of the camera as much as onstage: to have worked enough that I can keep discovering.
About Denise Fujiwara
Denise Fujiwara is a dancer, choreographer, and teacher born in Toronto. Founder of Fujiwara Dance Inventions in 1991, she has developed a practice of creation, performance, and teaching for more than forty years. Her path in butoh includes mentorship with Natsu Nakajima beginning in 1993. Her works have been presented in Canada and internationally. Read her official biography.
About Studio 303
Active in Montreal since 1989, Studio 303 supports the development of artists in dance and performance. Its history has been shaped around creation and encounters between disciplines. The organization focuses much of its support on professional workshops and residencies, which provide time and space to research, practise, and develop an artistic approach. Discover Studio 303 and its history.
