Events

Ankoku-Butoh Workshop with the Harupin-Ha Dance Theater /  by DBL

The Harupin-Ha Dance Theater will be coming to Los Angeles September 15-16, Oct. 6-7, and Nov.3-4 to share their holistic style of Ankoku-Butoh.

Techniques transcend beyond the dance studio and stage. From daily maintenance, core work, and internal imagery, techniques become useful in daily life and provide a foundation for life long learning and growth. These workshop will culminate with a performance in December.

This is the first of the workshops. Feel free to invite anyone to this that you feel might be interested. It is truly a rare event to have butoh masters Koichi and Hiroko Tamano in LA.

September 15 &16 (Saturday and Sunday) 11am-3pm

October 6 &7 (Saturday and Sunday) 11am-3pm

November 3&4 (Saturday and Sunday) 11am-3pm

Cost: 40 for one day, 60 for both

To reserve a spot email:

josie: info@razethewhitebox.com

*Walk-ins welcomed

We Live in Space

2520 W Jefferson Blvd, Los Angeles, California 90018

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Harupin-Ha Dance Theater

Koichi and Hiroko Tamano were among the very first to perform Ankoku Butoh, which translates literally to “the dance of darkness.” The genre emerged in the late 1950s in post-atomic bomb Japan. It was created by two dancers, Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata, who sought to create a new, uniquely Japanese form of expression that completely rebelled against the Establishment, and both Eastern tradition and Western styles. Koichi joined Hijikata’s dance company in 1960, as did Hiroko a few years later. Hijikata encrouaged the Tamanos to introduce Butoh to the United States. The Tamano’s performance in the 1976 “Japan Now” exhibition at SFMOMA was the first Butoh seen by an American audience and made a big sensation. The Tamanos moved their dance company Harupin-Ha from Tokyo to Berkeley, California in 1979 with the blessings and encouragement of their teacher. For decades the Tamanos lead dance workshops in Berkeley and also operated the restaurants, Country Station and Tamasei, which served as meeting places for the dance and theater communities of the Bay Area. They are known for their holistic approach to the art of Butoh. The Mayor of the City of Berkeley, California declared March 28th, 2017 to be the “Koichi and Hiroko Tamano Day.”

Corporeal Reformation Exploration (@ Zorthian Ranch) /  by DBL

Body awareness, conditioning, and exploration meet up.

Please come join us at the Zorthian Ranch for this exploration. Bring water, a towel, free moving clothes, comfortable athletic shoes (the flatter the better), A yoga mat, if you got it (well be on the floor outdoors), a willingness to sweat, play and explore the environment outside and with-in yourself. Feel free to invite anyone that you feel might be interested.

The session will be divided into three section roughly one hour each.

1.Warm up

2.Flow work

3.Meditative/ Stretch

Heavily influence by butoh techniques, others are welcomed. Feel free to bring in movement ideas that will work in these areas. If you are unsure, come along and see how this session will function.

This is all levels. Listen to your body and keep your own pace.

*Next Corporeal Reformation Exploration will be August 19.

**These sessions will end in a meditative play experience/ photo / video shoot at the end of the month.*

info@razethewhitebox.com

5-10 suggested donation

11:30am-2:30pm

Zorthian Ranch

3990 Fair Oaks Ave, Altadena, California 91001

*********

josie j:

My movement practice is an extension of my search to unlock internal memory. This "built-in" info I believe will help us function in this planet not as separate individuals but as part of an organism.

I have started to collect exercises and play activities that I believe will help awaken already built in ways of healing, conditioning, and inherent ways of centering yourself.

Some of these methods include: Working with dichotomies, open eye imagining/ meditation, theories of flow, metamorphosis, athletic conditioning (endurance for ecstatic dance) sensation work (meditations to awaken sensitivity) and play (playing with forms {playing within parameters}).

When it comes to body work my background started with performance art, branched out to Butoh and now Martial Arts. I still am actively searching and wanting to learn and share new methods of body work. I am interested in the exchange of these ideas and fascinated with how lineages grow and cross pollinate.

My hopes is to build a way to become fully the animal we could be. In a way a universal way of approaching movement that is approachable and helps in everyday life, work, self defense and in play. Not animal as reactionary but adaptable and intellect, contributing to the graciousness of our ancestors.

I don't see myself as a teacher but possibly a facilitator that wishes to learn as well.

I personally use the term Corporeal Reformation, a way of saying at this moment my body needs a reevaluation, a reorganizing, a re-shifting that is deep and spiritual.

Face the Music Dance Festival /  by DBL

Butoh has influence me in ways that extend pass the imprint it has left on my body and dance.  Working with the Harupin-Ha Dance Theater is always a lesson is conscious existing.  Therefore this fest is not only a milestone for me but an honor, a gift, and a challenge...so it goes... growth stops in death,...but even death is a transition. 

Butoh Workshop in Ireland with Hiroko Tamano /  by DBL

Butoh Workshop in Ireland with Hiroko Tamano.

April 9-12. 

Full workshop (4 days): 100 euros

one day (drop ins): 30 euros

Work Shops Dates: 11AM~4PM , April 9th,10th, 11th

Location: Olympic Karate Club, 81-83, Shandon Street, Cork, Ireland Telephone:00-353-21-439766

6

Performance at same location : April 12, 2PM~3PM ( we may work Noon~4PM )

Work Shop :

Introducing " AnKoku- Butoh ( Dance of Darkness ) 12hr Workshop.

Through learning Butoh Master Koichi TAMANO's Method, you will know what body is, what mind is, why you are here in this life, a life with a limited time, a life that is in constant limbo between vitality and death, beauty and the grotesque, Joy and sorrow.

Performance : One hour performance based on Work Shop's vocabulary.

Please share if you know anyone that would be interested in this once in a lifetime opportunity to study with Hiroko Tamano Sensei, one of Hijikata Tatsumi's early bright students when he started out.

Ankoku Butoh Gathering, Life and Death Celebration March 18 /  by DBL

Come see a variety of dancers, including me, at this life and death celebration.

*****

The second annual Butoh gathering in honor of the founder of Ankoku Butoh, Tatsumi Hijikata (1928-1986). Buto, live music and a bonfire with Okkon serving local Japanese street food available for purchase.

Butoh in the Nature

1pm - 3pm : Free to Public at Live Oak Park #2 Picnic area

- Music: Caleb & Pepp Family Band

- Food:

Okkon Japanese Street Food

- BUTOH Choo choo train ride!!

- Peace Crane Origami making --> send to Hiroshima

- Seed Bomb making Muddy circle

BUTOH show case

...

4pm - 6pm

Berkeley Art Center

Tickets at the Door: $5 ~ $50

http://

www.berkeleyartcenter.org/

calendar-1/

berkeley-butoh-gathering

See More

DivineBrick @ Los Angeles + Mexico City. Open Connection With Mexico City Portals Project /  by DBL

DivineBrick will be at this event Come early and see all the artist represent their work:

Los Angeles + Mexico City. Open Connection With Mexico City

Portals Project

The Portals Project is an an open and immersive shared space for connecting with people around the world from in a gold shipping container with screens and speakers. This event will feature drop in performances and artwork being shared live with people in Bosque de Chapultepec (Chapultepec Park) in Mexico City.

sharedstudios.com

Wonder Valley Experimental Music Festival /  by DBL

The Nineth inter-ration of the Wonder Valley Experimental Music Festival, FREE, FREE camping on site. Lots to like here!

Greetings All,

Here is the line up for the WVE9. After this list I have some other notes. Be sure to scroll down.

April 1st, 2017, at the Palms Restaurant, 83131 Amboy Rd, 29 Palms, CA 92277

11:20 PM XOME

11:00 to 11:20 Set up

10:40 PM Brutal Poodle

10:20 PM Medicine Cabinet (Tracy, CA)

10:00 PM Thrall (from SF)

10:00 to 10:20 Set up

9:40 PM IGOR AMOKIAN

9:20 PM J3M5

9:00 PM Skunk Puppet

8:40 to 9:00 Set up

8:20 PM UNMOVE

8:00 PM Disappearing

7:40 PM Third Ear Experience

7:20 to 7:40 Set up

7:00 PM DivineBrick Sunset 7:14

6:40 PM X-Eyes

6:20 PM Nature’s Miracle

6:00 to 6:20 Set up

5:40 PM Justin Scheid, Brian Akenoh

5:20 PM Hongo Killer

5:00 PM phog masheeen

4:00 Load in

I could use some help setting up, tearing down and running the event. If you have an interest in participating in what is fairly un-glamorous work, please let me know.

Thanks Again,

Mark Soden

Open Call: Raze the WhiteBox focus group /  by DBL



Looking for artist, performers, movers, makers, doers, and facilitators with general inclusiveness that are not afraid to question identity, self and others.
The challenge will be seeing yourself outside of yourself. A reexamining of set ways of seeing and believing.
This piece will be a remake of a historical performance.
Potential for career altering exposure to general merriment in a semi large scale.
Project to be fleshed out in the new year to be presented in late 2017 to early 2018.
Diversity in group is a must.

Contact: info@razethewhitebox.com

Body Works: Five Senses (DivineBrick in collab. w/ Wes Johansen and Z.Vital) /  by DBL

Whereas watching 

Izella Berman with Jean Paul Jenkins and Mitchell Brown

Whereas

DivineBrick in collab. w/ Wes Johansen and Z.Vital

“A Rosie Smell, Still Turns My Nose if Grown with Distaste”

game experience in three parts (grey 3)

Viewer this is your part of this game. A simple description to still allow the experience to be new.

Part one

When invited to the Chamber feel welcome to come along. The space you hold sacred around you will be respected, all that is asked from you is to exist at a moment with another force other than yourself. You are free to leave at anytime, until another is chosen. We are mirrors to each other.

Part two

Come closer to the figure(s) that move under the light. Come see this moment as a landscape in which you hover over. See yourself in these/ this figure(s) as floating world(s), only now able to see the pale blue delicate soup that you are. Harmony easily broken with any influence dropped in. Decipher your roots.

Part Three

Five with frogs follow the figure(s), the rest follow the five. Five lead us all to the next experience when this ones complete.

Photos by Andrew Hall

Raze the WhiteBox- DivineBrick in Collab. w/ Mike Meanstreetz and Z.Vital @ Human Resources, Chinatown, LA, Ca /  by DBL

Raze the WhiteBox

from

Eon Mora

on

Vimeo

.

Raze the WhiteBox

DivineBrick in Collaboration with Mike Meanstreetz and Z.Vital @ Human Resources, Chinatown, LA May 10, 2016

Video By Eon Mora

www.razethewhitebox.com

Click on Title of Vid to Enlarge

Divinebrick in Collaboration with Mike Meanstreez and Z.Vital @ Human Resources LA May 10, 2016 /  by DBL

May 10, 2016 9:30 pm

Human Resources, Los Angeles, Chinatown

410 Cottage Home St

Los Angeles CA

90012 

in collaboration with Mike Meanstreetz from the LA band Present (drums) and Z. Vital (loop effects) to close this circle.

Bass pushing air, creaking, cracking a wooden device called the Basso, to set the bio and molecular rhythm of the space. A device, part bazooka subwoofer speaker, part drum, and part bellowing feedback loop. Supplier of urban noise this wooden sub-woofer will be the splintered connection to indigenous past.

A past rooted in a vibration.  A slight alteration.

A exploration in movement call

ed Corporeal Reformation will occupy the rest of this space. Inner woven reaction to time, space voice and body, will be aided by the pulse of the sub, riding on witnesses inside a WhiteBox as landscape with their collective voices to activate our collective memory.

Sound, Movement and Voices will, I hope, conjure somewhat of a memory in us all.  A dormant behavior that is of a collective experience and a collective understanding.  If only for a second, a fleeting moment of understanding, may we forget the destructive philosophy that we follow without question.  This “performance” is more of a hot box of possibility.

Free to voice yourself.  We will need you to be the creepy crawlers in a night by the lake.  The many gorgeous songs on a perfect night while we form the body of water and the movement of the sky.  Be the bubbling pot that is the voices at a crowded bar.  The musical conversations on a semi crowded bus.  The silly conversation over heard by reason of proximity.  This WhiteBox will converge to be a primordial soup of abstraction of Growth and collective participation, a dance easily achieved by living.

This is a collaboration, concept by DivineBrick, vocal loops by Z. Vital, and textures and rhythm by Mike Meanstreetz.  At center the Basso.

Trying to reclaim some sort of indigenous or forgotten belief or behavior is close to impossible when these things have been destroyed or co-opted. Where does one turn if their past does not exist to borrow from it? Sometimes the things that the colonizer has stereotyped as “indigenous” become the only symbols on which to connect to, either in act of dissent or in hopes of connection. This will further convolute this already broken system. This semiotics are also the way the colonizers themselves find ways of connecting to more holistic styles of existing. Unearthing resources and the destruction of land not only uproots the indigenous people but also further removes the colonizer from forgotten memories of coexisting, not occupation of this land and its inhabitants (this includes plants and animals). Soon the definition of colonizer and the colonized bleeds into a convoluted One.

*instructions will be give on arrival

.

josie j, Mike Meanstreetz and Z. Vital have collaborated on may projects and events including Parallax Beach (An exploration in primordial development in time).

https://

mikemeanstreetz.bandcamp.co

m/

http://poopdood.bandcamp.com

FB Event- 

https://www.facebook.com/events/986952711382236/

HR website-

http://humanresourcesla.com/calendar-events

Release Party (La Cita)/ Toad Removed (Audio Track) /  by DBL

La Cita DTLA Tape Release Event

February 2, Tuesday I will be performing along other artist at La Cita's Experimental Night.  8pm no cover.

 In collaboration with Brennan Lowe part of my set will have video accompaniment. 

Part of the continuing Island of Misfit Toys night at La Cita, this event is also the Parallax Beach/ DivineBrick Tingo Tongo Tapes split tape release.  The tape contains recordings of sounds connected to movements of body once witnessed.  The audio can rightfully stand alone but without the movements that once occurred in tandem, the full concept and experience is lost.  In method of Corporeal Reformation each visceral performance can only have that one outcome.  Context and setting influences the movement.  Truth be told there is video of these particular performances, at a particular place, with movement repeated but not rehearsed, on my site.  Feel free to inquire.

Parallax Beach is a collaboration with Brennan Lowe (movement), josie j (movement), Mike Meanstreetz (sound), Zach Vidal (sound), and Wes Johansan (video).  The tape contains audio from Parallax Scroll a work that explores concepts of primordial beginnings.

https://www.facebook.com/events/1005498732844637/permalink/1011279192266591/

FB: https://www.facebook.com/events/1005498732844637/permalink/1011279192266591/

The audio from my solo project DivineBrick is the audio from the winter west coast tour I went on in 2014.  Each track is an individual work with form and mood. Tracks also contain sound from the Butó Flutó a wooden/ electronic headware.  

Here is a sample track from the set.

<a href="http://divinebrick.bandcamp.com/track/toad-removed">Toad Removed by DivineBrick</a>

https://divinebrick.bandcamp.com/releases

Unfolding reforming a motion toward expansion. Meeting points in which this toad will be left for fine.  What will out last the green growth , the crawling friends, the moisture alive? A new form of exploration, fast, but rolling as a troll.  Finding shelter in destruction. Full round we have something oozing out the other end.  Still pulsing still growing. 

Accompaniment by the Butó Flutó.

Thoughts on Central Ave. Jazz Festival /  by DBL

I have been tinkering with this idea of source.

When you are striped from your past removed from the source, mechanisms to make the real reasonable are distorted, reality keeps for the Other.  In the past few days I have been thinking about lineage.  at this moment I feel lineage is what helps memory retain the reason and the drive to move in the desired direction.

This weekend I attended the Central Avenue Jazz Festival.  There I witness lineage and connection.  Majority of the attendees were very aware of their lineage.  Locals that have lived through LA’s  segregation/ or separation that still leave noticeable divides in the land. 

I try to comprehend what it feels like to be fenced into a certain sector of the geographical scape?  What kind of thoughts would you have if it was still hard to live in any other place?  What if they told you, you were wrong.  Wrong for thinking there was still such a thing as segregation.  What feelings would you be able to construct when White Reason (I find it twisted to use this faulty binary race code)  still does not explain your present condition.  In the while the Other imposes on your community.  If you can understand what it is to see the affiliated family you adhere to still being seen as alien natives, African Americans, what sentiment would you gain.  Here as long as any other non-native, yet acceptance only for the "positive" end of this two sided spectrum. 

While walking around the festival, when I wasn't stuffing my face, I saw a community holding on to a genius culture but subjugated to self hate, which has attacked other communities as well.  Still I saw so much joy and love.  The music was enjoyable to every last note.  The caliber of musicianship brought to the doorsteps of community was too much for me to contain.  At this time in my age I find perfect joy in seeing others bask in spectrum's I only peek at.  A stare of the two.  Exchanges that only two felt shaping them as old memories and last favorites.  This community is rich with decades and elders, talent and unapologetic genius.  Roots are deep.  Lineage is strong. 

Me, my name is as generic as josie j.  End trails of clustered culture attached behind me.  Too strange to forget the past, subtly remembering mine, actively constructing its future.  The un-anchoring both forced and sought.  I hope to find some lineage.  I might see how lineage finds its flower at the end of a long system of tendon-roots infinitely connected.

How connected?  Live in LA long enough and the roots will grab you by the leg.  Major Garcetti, old jr. high schoolmate Anthony Wilson (son of Gerald Wilson), played a surprisingly clean small piano solo, a bit shaky at first but pleasant. As I can attest to live a life time in LA and you would see yourself another character in this interconnected landscape. On this same day of July 25 2015, LA dedicated 42nd and Central Ave as Gerald Wilson Square.  Gerard Wilson of Shelby, Mississippi arrived here in 1940 because it was a place that welcomed and allowed him certain access.  The Dunbar hotel located on Central Ave. was the nicest hotel that welcomed black musicians.  Gerald Wilson remained in LA living a few steps from his community, historically rich Leimert park.  A jazz giant.  An artist uniting his community.  He lived with his wife Josefina Wilson, modestly.  Artists construct our reality we owe them for our sanity.  They all should live a bit above their choosing of comfort.  An Artist and a teacher Gerald Wilson was everything an artist aspires to be.  Influential, respected and remembered, a good man. 

I walked along the festival streets and write this as an outsider, welcomed in a beautiful culture that I see myself a part of.  Born on foreign land removed from source. A different character connected to a lineage of colonization.  A crusade victorious in embedding its symbols and drives.  In this binary you can only fall on one side if you are heavy with color and conviction.

Winter Tour '14 /  by DBL












on tour this December with these brilliant artist.

Xover (Sardinia island, Italy):
The project Xover (Danilo Casti) is an electronic sound and visual performance that
runs around glitches, drone noises, field recordings played by digital and analogue
electronics instruments, a mixture between digital and analogue sounds, programming and
circuit bending, idiomatic shapes, abstract sound objects and absurd musical architecture.
XOVER
No questions
No answers
No mallets
No bullets
Pulses and textures
Birds and bricks
Future is past
No way out from this land.

http://vimeo.com/album/3038836
http://youtu.be/QfqhZ7jhQDQ?list=PL4rqhtK8Zy_weUg8pDH4CnC-X_Ic2F9D7

PRESENT :
Born of 2012, PRESENT is a Los Angeles based quartet performing heavy experimental music.
Their atonal compositions abandon guitars and lyrical form in favor the melodic dissonances
of female sax, synthesizer, and vocals seated atop a hectic percussive intensity. Non-traditional
linear song gives way to free form passages, often in collaboration with other artists.The
tone of their music invokes influences of 20th Century Classical, Black Metal, Japanese
underground, Anarcho Punk and Jazz. Live shows are often accompanied by performance art,
projections, improvised noise.

Cassette on Sanity Muffin Records:
http://mikemeanstreetz.bandcamp.com/album/present-ct-assaults-split

Bouncing on the ball that made me.
http://youtu.be/LCfViSE8JkI



DEC 20th LA WHEREAS WAREHOUSE (DTLA)
w/ Bad Acid Trip, Bandito Overlord, C T Assaults


DEC 21 Atwater Nomad Gallery

DEC 23 SF webcast

DEC 24 Oakland/Sac/Davis TBA

DEC 25 Portland TBA

DEC 27 Seattle The Blue Moon
w/Failings (PDX)

DEC 28 Astoria Kala
w/ Existence Habit, Failings

DEC 29 Portland The Projection Museum

DEC 30 Ashland Club 66
w/Failings

JAN 2 SF KUNST-STOFF arts
w/ Tawil+Tiberius (OAK), Joe/Leyya (Bay)

JAN 3 Oakland Life Changing Ministries
w/ Tawil+Tiberius