Kasai and Voice Power

[Bruce Baird]

Gang,

I would like to jump start a conversation about my contentious remark in Philly that in a meta-sense, i didn't see that much difference between Min's micro-movements and Kasai's voice power, which all of you pretty much took issue with right away.

I have been spending a few weeks reading Kasai, among which was the roundtable discussion Kasai Akira, Ishii Tatsuro, Nomura Kiwao, “Body that Speaks, Words that Move” Bijutsu Techo, (March 2005): 54-72. (笠井叡、石井達朗、野村喜和夫「発話する身体、動きだす言葉」『現代詩手帖』2005年3月、pp. 54-72。)

Ishii asks Kasai why he uses his voice (to groan, shout, etc) more than most dancers, but in a way that is distinct from contemporary dance (where there is all sorts of dialogue, monologue, etc).  Kasai replies: 

"I voice when I am stuck in improv movement. Sometimes, no matter how hard I try, when I am doing improv, I get stuck.  At those moments, what I can manage to produce is words/language [kotoba].  By voicing [lit. emitting voice], the throat dances. Then by no means a tsunami, but reverberations spread out over the whole body. And then another movement is born.  I am often helped out of a jam in this way." (61)

For me what is interesting about Kasai's account is the notion that reverberations spread throughout the body.  My gut feeling is that if you ask most people if they can feel the reverberations of their voice throughout their body, they will say no.  Of course, you can train yourself to feel this.  ( I confess that I don't know what is says about me, but I can feel reverberations from my voice better in my toes than in my fingers.)  Then Megan said, that Kasai asked you to voice, and then hold the sensation in your body of voicing even while not doing so.  This reminds me of Kurihara's account of training with Ashikawa in which she was told to imagine people walking around her, but she couldn't, so Ashikawa had her walk with four dancers around her (front, sides and back), and then had her hold the sensation even while the dancers left her by herself.  Whether its the sensation of your voice reverberating through your body which gives birth to a movement or which you then retain even while not voicing, or its the sense of people walking by you that you retain while they are not there, or its the tics of Min (or even of Rennie Harris), I still have the feeling that in the meta-sense these are not so far apart.  But I'd be interested in hearing more of your opinions about voice power, how it feels to you, what kinds of uses you have made of it or what kinds of experiences you have had with it in workshops (whether Kasai or not), etc.

Thanks,

Bruce

Bruce Baird
Associate Professor
Asian Languages and Literatures
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Butô, Japanese Theater, Intellectual History

717 Herter Hall
161 Presidents Drive
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003-9312
Phone: 413-577-4992
Fax: 413-545-4975
ba...@asianlan.umass.edu

For information about my book Hijikata Tatsumi and Butoh see:

http://us.macmillan.com/hijikatatatsumiandbutoh/BruceBaird

[Tanya Calamoneri]

Yes yes yes! Read Nagatomo's Attunement of the body. Dogen on interresonance. I will send my diss finally when I get home tonight bc I write about this. Would love to talk about it more. I am hoping for another dance and music conference where we can discuss further!

Best

Tanya 

Sent from my iphone, sorry about typos

Tanya Calamoneri

www.sogono.org

718.207.3307

[Megan Nicely]

Hi Bruce and everyone,

I would love to discuss this more! And Bruce as a side note, I would also love guidance on other Kasai sources. I don't read Japanese so know i am missing a lot, but I would be interested in investing in a translator so that I can flash out my research more, for potential publication, etc.

I think this issue of sensation and reverberation in the body is so important, and the imagined made real. It also addresses the issue of somatics and butoh that Rosmary brought up a while ago. But not sure vocal vibration and other vibrations can be said to be the same (but also perhaps to use R. Schechner, they are not not different either). 

If others are interested, is there a way to set up a blog/form on certain topics like this on the google groups site? And also to share resources? Sometimes hard to keep all these emails together. Then we could choose from these for our next conference take-over and possible publications (like the training journal)!

Best to all, Megan

[Alissa Cardone]

yes, me too- would love to hash this out --- I have a lot of notes on Voice Power from my various trainings

with Kasai and especially from a training I did with him in Eurythmy - I will transcribe my notes and email 

them... a google group would certainly help organize the conversation.... 

i'm a bit tied up with babies at the moment... but i'll get it together as soon as i can.. 

- Alissa

[Bruce Baird]

You get an excuse because of babies!!

On Jul 9, 2012, at 2:51 PM, Alissa Cardone wrote:

i'm a bit tied up with babies at the moment... 

[Zack Fuller]

I however have no babies, and therefore no excuse! Hi everybody.

Bruce,

Bruce,

I can see the relation between Ashikawa’s instruction to hold the reverberations of the other dancers in the body after they are gone and Kasai’s instruction to hold the reverberation of the voice in the body without expressing it (though I would not go so far as to say they were “the same thing.”). I don’t see at all the relation between either of these and Tanaka’s bisoku movement. In my experience and understanding, bisoku requires an extreme degree of mental concentration to every part of the body, a constant circling of concentration on various parts of the body in an effort to keep them fully engaged, moving so slowly that it may seem as if they are not moving at all, yet still moving, active. This is a very different use of mental energy than what Kasai talks about, where he uses his voice as a way out of being stuck while improvising. This has more to do with freeing the body from the control of the conscious mind. There seems to be a similarity between this use of voice power and the way that Simone Forti uses voice (although my understanding is that she uses words, but not words without sound. I could be mistaken here).         If you are interested in the idea of the voice vibrating in the body, Jerzy Grotowski had his actors practice controlling their voices to the degree that they could cause them to vibrate in any part of the body (the knee for example). Of course they were using the voice much more extensively than Kasai or Forti. (Personally, I have done a lot of Grotowski based/derived/influence training, and practically zero buto training).

         The question I have is, what is at stake in saying that these very different practices are ultimately accomplishing “the same thing”? Personally, I feel I can learn more about the practice of individual artists by looking specifically at how they are different than at how they are the same on some meta level. Looking at similiarities can certainly be useful as well, and you bringing up this topic has made me interested in the similarities and differences in the use of the voice by Kasai, Forti, Grotowski, and Steiner’s (incidentally Kasai’s approach is so far from Eurythmy, which is clearly where it derives from, as Megan pointed out, as to be heretical, many eurythmicists consider him a heretic). I also think it is important to acknowledge that training methods and choreographic methods (or improvised performance), can be radically different (they certainly were in Tanaka and Cieslak's practice). 

         As for bisoku and voice power, I don’t really see the similarity.

Regards, Zack

[Katherine Mezur]

hi all
 I am off to Chile and Choreography and Corporeality group meeting up with Chilean dancers and scholars there. Madly writing on affect from bio-media and memory in Pina film and Hijikata film. I will try to set up a Wiki for us in Aug. 

Really enjoy this one on differences, and wonder more about these reverberations, and circulating concentration. Next conference, where ever, should be a practice exchange, with all these ideas put into action...Megan and I did a Butoh Shift at PSi that was really fun and inspiring, sort of meshing our different derived-from-butoh (and beyond) practices. PSi will be at Stanford next year, cool theme on time: "Then Now" and don't forget the Nordic SDHS...back on wiki and publication next month. xxx k

---

From: Zack Fuller <zful...@verizon.net>
To: butos-corp...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, July 18, 2012 10:15:36 AM
Subject: Re: Kasai and Voice Power

[Tanya Calamoneri]

Hi all - my dissertation is now available on Proquest!  I will email to people individually.  Not sure who all this group email is going to. 

Katherine - I love the idea of a practice-based exchange.  PSI at Stanford is even better. 

Hope all are well!  We are getting ready for the twins and trying to avoid the heat, which stinks for pregnancy...
Tanya

--
PhD, Presidential Fellow
Temple University Department of Dance

Artistic Director, Company SoGoNo
www.sogono.org
718-207-3307

[Bruce Baird]

Megan,

You finished your diss, right?  Can you tell me the name of it?  I am compiling a bibliography of more recent stuff on butoh, so....

t5hanks,

bb

On Jul 9, 2012, at 12:22 PM, Megan Nicely wrote:

[Bruce Baird]

sorry that was my mistake.  that was only supposed to litter Megan's inbox, not everyones!

On Jul 24, 2012, at 10:48 AM, Bruce Baird wrote:

Megan,

You finished your diss, right?  Can you tell me the name of it?  I am compiling a bibliography of more recent stuff on butoh, so....

t5hanks,

bb

On Jul 9, 2012, at 12:22 PM, Megan Nicely wrote:

[Rosemary]

Hi all,

Sorry I haven't engaged with the conversation. We're moving to Texas in 2 weeks, and I've just entered full panic mode. I'll check in when I've reached the other side!

-R.

--

www.evesapple.blogspot.com

[Megan Nicely]

Wishing you a happy landing in your new home, yippee!!!

: : :

Megan Nicely