We are too frightened of shadows. We cannot abide our vulnerability, our utter dependence upon a world that can eat us. Vast in its analytic and inventive power, modern humanity is crippled by a fear of its own animality, and of the animate earth that sustains us.

― David Abram, Becoming Animal.  

What is magic? In the deepest sense, magic is an experience. It's the experience of finding oneself alive within a world that is itself alive. It is the experience of contact and communication between oneself and something that is profoundly different from oneself: a swallow, a frog, a spider weaving its web.

David Abram in Interview with Derrick Jensen, www.derrickjensen.org. July 1, 2000

This three day workshop will encounter becoming animal and ‘creatureness’ and open a heightened physical and embodied awareness of our inextricable interdependence to the natural world. Drawing upon Butoh and expressive voice work, we will train in classic butoh animal forms as transmitted from the legacy of Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata (fish, cat, horse etc) and methods continued by the late Ko Murobushi.  The workshop also draws upon methods investigated by Marie-Gabrielle in her early works exploring Mutations (2001) and Mutability (2003) as well as the notion of Human Zoo (2001 onwards). The focus, through guided improvisation, will be on finding our own mutable animal and cultivating hybridity and fluidity between human and animal metamorphosis. The workshop is suitable for anyone who wishes to generally explore their inner animal landscape and tap into their dream self, the animal guide, the shadow and light of the animal self and energy, and allow time to enter into a creative mythical and chthonic space from which to begin to weave your own stories. 

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For Marie-Gabrielle's biography please see www.rotie.co.uk 

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