Butoh and Hamlet

One of Cynthia's more inspired strokes is doubling "Gertred" and the Ghost. Hamlet says to the King: "My mother is your wife, man and wife is one flesh, And so (my mother) farewel: for England hoe." The idea that (Hamlet's love for) the father lives inside the mother, adds a layer to the onion of Hamlet's dilemma. It makes palpable the Ghost's warning, "let not thy heart Conspire against thy mother aught, Leaue her to heauen, And to the burthen that her conscience beares," and reinforces the ever-presentness of the Ghost in Hamlet's psyche once he appears to him ("Remember me") at the beginning of the play.
On a personal level, it made the production more exciting to me as an actor. Having studied butoh for the last five years or so, it presented a great opportunity to combine the play and the dance, both studies is the raw essence of what it means to be alive and human. Yesterday one of my favorite teachers, Atsushi Takenouchi, sent an announcement for his next workshop... excerpts:

life walking, death walking. walking in the various situation with restriction. the way of body operating to make the movement come out from inside. sketch the things in the nature world like living life, animal, natural material by body properly. - one cycle of an embryo, a baby, a child, an adult, an old man. - an insect, a beast, trees, grass, a flower. - a gas, a liquid, a solid, gel, amoeba, an organism, minerals. capturing a conscious movement and an unconscious movement as a dance. dance a fragmental dream. gravitation and floating. various sound and body expression, voice. dance the seasonal body of your own. the process of the metamorphosis. the dance by organic and inorganic contact with other life. how we can be desperate.