Step inside the playful and imaginative world of Japanese Butoh, led by renowned performance artist Yumi Umiumare. This free, family friendly workshop is suitable for children and people of all ages.

Experience the surreal fun of Butoh dance, through playful games like peek-a-boo and hide and seek. Moving and shaking, creating funny shapes with your body and face, you will jump headfirst into a world of transformation and shape-shifting. Yumi will cheerfully guide you to dance as animals, trees, ghosts and wind, unleashing your inner animal, kook and spook.

Other ‘ButohOUT!’ Festival programs at the Abbotsford Convent:

• Six Week Workshop and Laboratory: 27 February – 4 April 2018
• Weekend Intensive Workshop: 23 – 25 March 2018
• One Day Workshop with Agung Gunawan: 20 April 2018
• ‘ButohOUT!’ Performance Season and Public Forum: 12 – 22 April 2018

This workshop is being held at the Convent as part of the ‘ButohOUT!’ Festival, presented by Yumi Umiumare and Takashi Takiguchi in partnership with the Abbotsford Convent Foundation. ‘ButohOUT!’ brings butoh, a Japanese theatre and dance form, into the context of Australia’s landscape, culture and history, through a series of workshops, performances and a public forum.

Notes:

• No dance background is required to take part in this workshop.
• The venue is subject to change due to the weather.

Artists 

Yumi Umiumare
Born in Hyogo, Japan, Yumi is the only Japanese Butoh Dancer in Australia and the creator of original Butoh Cabaret works. Originally a member of the seminal Butoh Company DaiRakudakan in Tokyo, she came to Australia to perform at the Melbourne International Festival in 1991.Yumi has been creating and teaching her distinctive style of works over the last 20 years and her works have received critical acclaim and garnered her and her collaborators several Australian Green Room awards.Yumi’s works are renowned for provoking visceral emotions, cultural identities with humor and they have been seen in numerous festivals in dance, theatre and film productions throughout Australia, Japan, East and West Europe, New Zealand and South East Asia. Through her diverse skills and unique aesthetics as a choreographer, she has also extensively worked in socially engaged theatre productions with aboriginal communities, culturally diverse communities and ESL groups, women from the sex industry and also people who has recovered from gambling addictions. She has recently worked in the ArtPlay Kids Club as part of Melbourne Fringe Festival 2017.

Yumi is a recipient of the fellowship from Australian Council (2015-16) for her PopUp Tearoom Series, and the recent winner of the Green Room Awards of Geoffrey Milne Memorial Award for her contribution to Contemporary and Experimental Performance.

Supported by the City of Yarra.