pain and trauma: Butoh, Kinetic Awareness® and political dance

today I finally got to work on my own spine again and noticed how a kind of 'cake' had formed around it, made of residual / habitual tension: it eased but at some level also constricted functioning. 

practicing Kinetic Awareness® and the ball-work I was able to finally address my spine without expectations, listen openly, not demand it to feel in a certain way or to move, if at all, at a certain speed, or ability/agility. instead I could leave it be, give it space, listen to it, gently allow myself to open up when I noticed I was moving at a speed (still slow, but noticeable and continuous, and mentally at a quite fast pace)

once again I realize how with Butoh, any potential restrictions are potentially undone, opened up, should not have to be confined in any way. this liberating potential, openness to being in connection with the environment & people remains an important challenge against norms & habits.

WITH YOU - dancing for peace in Myanmar - collaboration lead by kiori kawai on Vimeo.

as in more recent projects, I could also feel how relatively unharmed my spine, my central nervous system had been for the last 30 years of adulthood = no trauma, no hits (ok, one fall, of my own accord, in 2007)

* original song with footage from Myanmar https://youtu.be/zYqCSWMvD8Q


confronted with ongoing trauma and violence, from beatings to pushbacks, state terror, torture, sometimes over generations, what can be an honest and still emphatic response? (how) can I express solidarity, that I am moved by this suffering, without creating a shortcoming or travesty?

is it okay to work with my own traumatic experiences, apply them to a role, to give my hint towards what more there may be, but not pretending it was I who was made to suffer violation? or is it even a duty, since I happen to free enough of such trauma that I even can begin to speak of it, exactly because I am no longer in the middle of it being (re-)inflicted?