Students participating in this year's Butoh Theory and Technique class at The Evergreen State College will present a performance piece, "dreaming einsteins", in the Experimental Theatre, March 10th and 11th at 8 pm. Under the tutelage of doranne crable, their facilitator and teacher, they began their work last Fall. For the first time, this year's class focused on a particular text, Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams, exploring the intersections of light, time, and space. The piece is loosely based on images from that novel. There is no storyline, as usual, to the piece. Rather, it is an exploration of imagery as well as an opportunity for the dancers to present what and how they have learned to dance Kazou Ohno's interpretations of the possibilities of Butoh to provide a place in which an audience can simply experience what the see, hear, and feel, not what they think, expect, and analyze Kazuo Ohno's technique is central to the work, as is one of his most quotedinterpretations: "The wounds of the physical body always heal; the wounds of the heart, never. Once we accept that, we can speak poetry through the body that words can never utter."

Butoh is one of several Japanese words for "dance performance". Generically, it has it's roots in Japanese culture, reaching back much further than the Butoh dance expression made popular in the West after World War II. Although the form has come to be associated with the aftermath of the United Sates of America dropping the Atomic Bomb on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, that is not the meaning or the intention of the overall performance techniques or contexts of Butoh, either in Japan or in the West.

Two Japanese Masters of Butoh Performance, Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, imitated the form in the 1950's and 1960's, training many Western dancers to use the technique as Dance Theatre. Since that time, hundreds of dancers and actors have traveled to Japan to study with authentic Japanese Masters, or they have studied with Japanese dancers and teachers who have traveled to Europe and the United States. Many Western choreographers and teachers have studied and translated the form into their experimental dance and theatre explorations.

DATE: Friday & Saturday, March 10 & 11, 2006
SHOWTIME: 8:00 pm
PLACE: The Evergreen State College – Experimental Theater – Communications Building
ADMISSION: General Admisison - $10 / Students & Seniors $5
TICKETS AVAILABLE: The TESC Bookstore, BuyOlympia.com, Box Office one hour before showtime
INFORMATION: (360) 867-6833 or go here.