DBL

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

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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

I am Not a Dancer.... /  by DBL

Some Have Influenced Me Profoundly.


I don't really connect myself to the Dancer lineage. I feel that those artist master their craft beyond what I can do, but I see now that there are and have been influential Dancers in my life. As I get older I am finding a long yet loose thread to some kind of lineage. Maybe my teenage angst is finally receding. Now I can except my elders more respectfully.

Maybe the first Dancer was Michael 'Boogaloo Shrimp' Chambers ,"Turbo" in the movie breaking. His sweep piece still sends chills through my body. Ko Murobushi, which a couple of years before his passing followed me on FB...just a lil possibly meaningless accomplishment. Of course my long time teacher/ sages the Tamano's. I learn something new each time just interacting with Hiroko Tamano. Lessons beyond movement. She is the closest I have experienced to a sage in my life. The closest that has changed it. Thank you profoundly.

Yesterday I saw one of these few influential Dancers in my life perform, Oguri. Oguri is based in Venice, Ca and like the others I mentioned has continued to develop his craft throughout his life. Seemingly ageless, something about his and the Tamano’s form that seem to not fear death but embrace the existence of the body, not to destroy it but be in it, sense in it, exist in it, understanding its fragility, and respecting it. Not to say they wish to be immortal...not at all. They stare at mortality and make it their intimate friend, not their over indulgent co-conspirator. This and their soft view on life and movement I believe slows their existence...a stroll to smell the flower on their chest.

I always have a profound experience watching Oguri. Yesterday was no different. In his form I see humanity, its ugliness, its silliness, its frailness and the way trauma can fracture it; transmuting these pieces into something wholesome, and healing. This piece I saw was about death and how our love ones from our childhood become the lovers of our present. How in dreams and memories these things blur, we embrace, this embrace becomes a holding of what was once before, a hope to remember a warmth from the past. We are just children hoping to be loved. Hoping to hold a familiar warm hand. Hoping to have someone there to tell us, it’s ok. To hold us to their chest and kiss us on our small foreheads.

Yet in life we sometimes are alone. Sometime we are scared. Sometimes we are broken. This is life, without this darkness the washing that is love would not feel so sweet.

I wonder why memory, for me, is so fresh in soreness. This lesson of memory as a warm fire, is a new one for me, it is something I am learning.

Thank you to my elders, thank you to the people I love.

My darkness finds home in your light.

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

Rememebring Something that Comes to Me at Every Life- A Rose Perished /  by DBL



I do miss you, a rose that perished.

I imagine your color is much more yellow. Your smell much more sweet. I hope your roots are stronger and your highest vine higher than before. I still think you were the perfect one. Despite your beauty you were contained and restricted by a cancer of doubt. A cancer easily developed. Something I to felt. Delusions of your form are always present. More vivid when I sleep. I have no answers only questions. A bond through the ages, maybe, destined to always be almost. I fear to reach out because your space is sacred, I rather leave it to someone else's doing. I had your image in my mind before I knew you, therefore I can't forget what was there before me.

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

Future Loop /  by DBL




Music uploaded by artist data mined by AI. AI used to produce pop music and music funded by a panel voted through swiping on initial appeal. Laptops are given to artist in impoverish areas to have a variety of demographics from which to mine from. Artist soon start using the hacked AI software as well.

Four Direction Prayer /  by DBL




One Human being presented on this Planet (under his feet=Earth, above
his head=Outer Space).

Standing toward to East (Sunrise, Future, Possibility, make things better).

on his Back=West ( Sunset, Past, Ancestors).

on his Right=South ( symbolized an old lady carry basket full eggs &
seeds. Nurture, Next Generations ).

on his Left=North (symbolized an old man with wisdom through his

experience. Teachers, Elders)

His body deform to Bird (to cross the sky), to Monkey (Hug a Tree), to be a Tree (Gather Energy of the Earth).

He release the Energy of the Earth through his body to the Sky, Carry back Sky into his body (Emptiness).

He presents himself to each direction, through his empty body, the
element of the direction blow through his body and exchanged to
opposite direction.

Dance of Life= Four Direction Pray
taught by Txi Whizz in Vancouver 1983

—Hiroko Tamano

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

Proposal For Human Resources LA Decolonize LA /  by DBL



Proposal for “Raze the WhiteBox”
To raze the WhiteBox will be a symbolic action of a greater deconstruction. Working within models of colonization will only develop concepts consumed by colonizing behaviors. Dismantling of this gallery space would be the only method to decolonizing it.

The WhiteBox (any gallery or museum space that hermetically isolates artwork) in its design and conception will always contain/own an object or thought. Property and borders are red flags of colonization. Dismantling a structure which is designed to contain objects and thoughts within 6 sides would be the action to decolonize it. Cement is not fertile ground, it is dead inactive space. A public space that allows community, inspiration and creativity does not exclusively exist as a collection or claim to ownership as does a museum or gallery. Community, inspiration, and creativity by their very nature will always remain fluid and un-owned. These three concepts only empower when used by the collective mass. The process of decolonizing spaces will involve replacing structures in which people collectively perform these concepts.

The remaining land, once this WhiteBox is dismantled, should be a network in which Peoples (any groups that have internalized a colonialist ideology) can regain a culture, but also regain what mother nature once offered in its harsh but nurturing way. The colonization of a People resulted at times with a simultaneous colonization of the land as well. Returning the land to its state of natural symbiosis will plant the seed of change that is necessary for this wounded earth to remember its role and for us to see its glory. This demolition is the only holistic therapy/ cathartic ritual that will remember the many forgotten People, forgotten knowledge, and resources that the colonizers either stole or destroyed. A WhiteBox and its confining walls symbolically and literally censor the past and the land onto which it has rooted itself.

The demolition will be followed by the introduction of indigenous plants and animals. This will inhabit the majority of the land and be integrated in whatever else is built. Some land will remain for agriculture and a stage/ gathering area for community and artist use. In the decolonization of this WhiteBox we must not forget about the inheritors of the colonized state of mind, the children. A place in which children could learn how to engage with nature and relearn the art of symbiosis would replace the structures that now exist on 410 Cottage Home St. If any structures will be built, they will remain small, since the land itself should provide a stage or setting for most things. Monetary means are intangible compared to community action and the blood and sweat of artist and activist. The land will be kept by its users.

If life is art how can life exist in a vacuum? Can the only definition of what art is be contained within a closet, which doors are only opened by someone with the means to own this space? Art removed from life, suffocated in a crate... Is this inspiration? Is art an object free from worldly interaction? Is it a phenomenon sheltered by the very thing that causes its chain-reaction? Transporting artwork produces waste, does this ill benefit this earth? Is a space built like a fortress a structure that welcomes the collective mass?

The brick unit is the beginning of growth. The straight lines imprisons the dirt, the self, the ripple of effect. - Raze the WhiteBox: A Think Tank of Change

May 1, 2016

On Art Practice and Corporeal Reformation /  by DBL

The practice that is this work is not about criticizing colonialism, it is a allegorical response. A very personal response that I might sometimes consider a universal response. The hope is to filter down not the philosophy but the intent, to get to that universalism. A simple state of being that is efficient only in its holistics. Free of biases and specialization, my hopes is to find a way to learn and observe, to live and exist, to breath and touch, to forget by remembering. For now I see this universality as growth, be it cancer, population or regeneration. Finding the precise balance to explore the external and the internal self is one of the challenges with this exploration of this growth. Why the self? It is the first sensor that we are given to understand this Growth. I theorize then that this must be the best at understanding this Growth, holistically each part of the self canceling out the inherent biases.

This exploration as it pertains to the physical and movement I have called Corporeal Reformation. Corporeal Reformation is the act of remembering and learning. It seems to me that performance work is the most radical thing I can do with art. It sets no boundaries between active and passive. We all become part of the community once again. My question would be which community is this we are suddenly a part of when experiencing a performance. The performer or the audience? Are we invading or uniting? Depending on approach a public performance can be a continuous state of colonizing. I think the only way to remedy this is by the passive and the active both being in full effect, and transferring between the hosts (the colonized and the settler).

So it seems that the act of decolonizing can be many messy deeds. In a post-colonial system the colonized and the settler becomes muddled and both become agents of each others restrictions. They both share the initiation rituals of the colonized. Both share symbols and stories in which the powers that be, the first settlers have establish. The colonized start to assimilate the settlers approach, find new land, growth credited partly from new places that one has never seen nor understood. The settlers lost in empty promises lose their own heritage in hopes that assimilation and whitism will provide more than what came before, since it has made a few wealthy and untouchable. Little do they know that the settlers are cattle just as the colonized are the human resource that is a staple of an industrialized nation.