Butoh Workshop
Yael Karavan

17 e 18 january 2026  |  11h00 – 17h00

Butoh workshop – The body as a vessel of metamorphoses with Yael Karavan

Butoh is an avant-garde dance form, a philosophy, and a method that was created in Japan in the late 1950s by Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. It is not a technique, but rather a method and approach to dance that arises from within us and connects us to our essence, nature, the universe, and the cycles of life and death.

Karavan is proposing an intensive exploration of Butoh, starting from the philosophy of its founding members until its current relevance, as a tool of creation, rebirth and transformation.

“Again and again we are reborn. It is not enough simply to be born of the mother’s womb. Many births are necessary. Be reborn always and everywhere. Again and again.” [T. Hijikata Founder of Butoh.]

What is butoh? An exotic performance style based on spectacular effects, white body makeup, grotesquely distorted limbs and faces, and a grueling slow speed of motion? Or is it a form of physical training that releases and brings forth primordial memory in the body that has been suppressed by contemporary society? It is both and neither and something completely else all together. As a simple man from the street once tried to explain:

1. All movements and dances, whose origins are unknown, are butoh.
2. Butoh is that which knows no rules or taboos.
3. When one person says “no” and the others say “yes”, then it’s butoh.

In contrast with other dance styles, butoh does not require learning a fixed vocabulary of dance movements. It draws its inspiration and power from internalised imagery: Buto is a “state of continual emptiness” in which transformation is limitless, and it is ‘possible’ to become any other thing. From another perspective, it is the continual process of self-erasure.

This workshop will work on the elements of metamorphosis, presence, readiness, contrast, dance through images, and tension between opposites. The aim is to free the body from its preconceived mundane set of gestures and movements and thus allow us to access a deeper and more authentic essence of movement and archetypal expression. Questioning how Butoh can be translated into a European body and why Butoh is not only relevant but extremely vital today.

Yael shares nearly 3 decades of Butoh Dace experience, having worked and studied with Butohists from 1st, 2nd, and 3rd generation, in Japan and Europe.

Informations

Select each of the sections below to learn about all the workshop specifications and the registration process.

Bio