BUTOH FESTIVAL - Cage

Cage

Intimate improvisation between sounds, images and movements.

The concept was created during the Corona-Virus quarantine time. A cage is a limit, physical, psychological, and political, it compresses and fragments our capacities, our possibilities, and our freedom. But, on the other side, in this little tiny space, we can feel complete, because we don’t have distractions. We don’t see anybody, we don’t have to make choices, and this limit gives us safety. There’s a possibility: a chance to see deep inside ourselves, to be confronted with something hidden, that could be revealed only in the little tiny safe place of the cage. It starts a repetition, it becomes a loop, it brings problems and solutions, it evolves in circles, a circle inside a circle, patterns that try to express themselves through physicality and movement. The cage becomes a place for transformations, morphing through natural organic elements, plants, animals, archetypes, female and male. Many emotions rise up, strong. We are trapped in the cage, trapped in our skin, trapped in our body. What does it mean, how does it feel to be in this body? The body itself is changing continuously. What does it mean? What does it do to me, changing through time?  Comes a moment of stillness. There’s a prayer for all the beings who are captured somewhere, prisoned, in a real or emotional, physical, or mental prison. I want to pray for those bodies, for those beings.  I dance in a cage 1,5 meters wide, mapped with video projections. The music, played live by Marja Burchard, amplifies the space of the cage, interacting with the movements. The live projections are patterns and textures drawn on the wall of the cage, the epiphany of the elements involved in the transformation.

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Dance: Anna Orkolainen 

Music: Marja Burchard 

Installation: Bobby Packham 

Visuals: Gerardo Vitale