visiting the skate board park first attempt

This last saturday Rex (the photographer) and I went to the Marginal way Skateboard park.It was a sunny sunny day, and we were ? ? where did the skaters go...? confused to why they were not gathered at under the viaduct.We were hoping to talk to a bunch of them if we could take pictures and collaborate with them while I dance in the pool with them..., a dream. There was about only  two skaters looking nervous that I was approaching them.(ofcourse I am decked out in white kabuki makeup and a costume, pretty scary)and one other skater, who was cought in the middle of all of this funny  artsy- fartsey business and felt pressured by the situation who had to dissappear in a flash of seconds, I GUESS I UNDERSTOOD IT MUST HAVE BEEN A LITTLE STRANGE.None the less, we got a kind- of- a- permission from the two boys and I thought they were nice to let us crash their prescious practice space. One of them told me that since its such a nice sunny day,everyone was at all the outdoor parks, like the one up near the zoo.......
Rex set up a tripod and I just started dancing.It was cold in an icy way, this concrete realm...The two of the skaters were cautious, I can sense them.It felt even colder...I could feel it in my shoulders, arms, and down my spine...I wished there were many of them, so I could talk to some of them, one of them, to the ones who do not mind something strange, curious, and to give us a chance,I wished at least even a strong reaction , to say " hey, get out!" to start a dialogue. but ofcourse we stepped into their territory.I  definitelywould like to come back again.SLowly, once in a long wHile,.. the skaters skated a quick passing -by, which made me excited.But  it felt lonely to me, More please...!  it was too empty.A beer-bellied guy with a beer appeared yelling something at me, something about making fun of a mime, or something.Oh, goodness, great, drunkenness again... he continiously yelled something rude to me, which I couldnt understand, and to Rex too, I kept dancing, just a little more, see what happens... but the two skaters took a BIG BREAK since he started to poke fun at us.What a delicate situation..! I felt like I learned something this day.. and more inpired to continue to come talk to them, definitely when all of their community is around! Ok, to not seem to bummed, a butoh video of the day is: Atsushi Takenouchi san. I met him briefly in NY last year.A gentle and kind man, a masterful dancer.

RaiNY dAY and test shoots with Rex

THis morning I put my white kabuki makeup on, put on the Mandy Greer's costume from the charactor Shiro from the last project Sonic Tales, and met with Rex Hohlbein to do some portrait shoots, then we went to the Skate board park under the viaduct, and then to the RedSquare of University of Washington again. Ok, I messed up on the date of the last posted blog...I have just published one that is on TODAY"S DATE but it was actually for a one few days ago... it was in fact last week.I love these photos, a study of light and shadows... and also a realm of some kind.

These are the correct photos for today, Feb 10th. The skateboard park was quite beautiful.According to Rex  the photographer, his nephew and some skaters have built the site, ( it is called Marginal Way Skate Park  ) and I have never seen such a place.It was kind of ghostly without the skaters, in a beautiful eerie way..with this almost chalky white day, but next shoot, we are going to crash in (?) to the skaters when they are chalkfull of them, and ask if I could possibly dance in their realm, with them.So today is kind of a test shoot :) I am sure it is going to be a wild crazy ride when we shoot with them.I recently went to watch another skatepark in Ballard neighborhood, and became in awe of their art.
The rain started to already drizzle, and by the time we got to the REDSQUARE, pretty later in the day.. it was umbrella time. I danced with the rain and Rex's camera for a while and then realized I was a bit afriad of slipping on the wet ground.I felt a slip there, and here, ans so began to minimize my movement to extremely slow...gravitationally slow, enjoying the dropping of the weight of the limbs...  from my slug-like internal looking out..I could see the students busily hurrying somewhere gripping their umbrellas, their eyes squinting, shielding from the rain bits.I can see that they are passing by, passing by as I get reaaly slower...They seem to be the lines of rain bits rushing by, criss crossing around me.It was definitely more of being in a tokyo street intersection.They began to feel like ants or insects or herd of cows passing by...what a different feeling from the last time I was here, the lively morning. I got more internal now. I even see poor Rex squinting his eyes, straining to take a picture. I sympasize and come out of my senses,.. then I felt the water from my hair gets into my eyes and realize its all of a sudden cold and I am actually very drenched.Then I get another second wind  from my body, opposite of my feelings and of my will, it finally starts to dance. That few moments made me happy.
I decided to put BUTOH inspiring dance of the day video by one of my favorite Butoh dancer Ko Murobushi.Please enjoy!

Redshoes WANTS TO DANCE from park to park to park.

This morning I went to the Occidental park.There were many people trafficking today because I came a little later than usual.I worked immediately with water-body- bag image with Jelly fishes floating around under my skin. I am following my jelly fishes, playing and busy in my condition including the face.Yes, its the weirdest excersize. They are tiny, these jelly fishes, moving agianst the walls of my skin, in the membraines of my face, of my chest... they can travel through down to my toes, through my knees, it pushes against my skin, and some times floats. The jelly fish is the only reason I am moving.This is one of the tool for Butoh, my friends Yuko Kaseki & Shinichi Koga taught long time ago in their workshop.The movements ends up quite small, and to keep it soft, is challenging. But also its not just about the body awareness, I also must use the space, the travelling..to be constantly seeing the surroundings. I can choose to be still...or constantly moving..diffrent speeds playing with my imagnation of diffrent sizes and quantity, the quality of the Jelly fishes movements... or I can stay to choose in one thing for a long time.. or I can surprize my self by adding more element of images on top. I also practiced the projection in space with all this.. This subtle and very concentrated movements always made me so cold that i had to go into the image -play of "Someone abruptly pulls my arm or grabs my hip and twists it un expectedly" game.It looks like you are a ragdoll being yanked around quite violently and uncontrollablly spasdic from the outside.One of the people who was watching me dance for a while started to speak.There was first one guy who started asking normal questions : " What are you doing? What IS THAT??" to, " Is that some form of MARTIAL ARTS?" and eventually introducing himself. This is, again while I am dancing.. so I POLITELY answered the questions, while still trying to maintain some what of a Jelly fish dance. Suddenly, there were two men, as I turned around, and he started to ask exact same questions (!) and then the other guy asks:" Do you know KARATE?" I answered, " no." and then he said " I DO." I said, " wow thats great." he said " I KNOW EVERYTHING". I opened my mouth that just hung open "......................" For a second or two, I suspected that there was a BAR across from where I was dancing.. oh yes, drinking...wow goodness this early...

he said " Hey CAN I HAVE YOUR NUMBER?" and then the other guy who looked like a side kick who generally said similar rantings made me snap and I said," I'M VERY SORRY BUT I ONLY HAVE 45MINUTES MORE I GET TO USE THIS SPACE, SO I NEED TO DANCE PLEASE"and continued on... where was I.. YES, then I worked with water splashing images which is from Noguchi Gymnastics.The Butoh artists I worked with, they always incorporated heavily on Michizo Noguchi's work. His tools was working with images to help our body to understand Gravity not in the left brain knowlege way only, but very unusually in the sensory and observing and physics and natural phenomenon such as how the water flows, or the fabric in the wind, or the way the body releases to the floor like a sensation of an elevatordropping to go to another floor, incorporating all of this in our body, working and listening to how we organize the muscles, the bones, etc.And all of that without using excess or unnessessary muscles- in other words, to be very efficient and also research what the body can move so beautifully. I worked on the images like this over and over until I got delerious.I also started on the contacts of diffrent parts of the feet.This gets you moving constantly and imediately warm.

There was a new musician setting up for the free live music open mic in the public square, and I took a break to listen. It was ........ X-MAS smoothie jazz music cocktail.. as I tried to leave, a bartender from across the square came out with apron on, and asked me if I was hungry, and wanted HOT SOUP. I said " sure! thankyou so much"and looked up at him with NIAGARA FALL watering red nose and frozen hands. I followed him in the bar and he and his friend was nice, they said they went bar hopping the night before and was not feeling very well this morning. After few converstaions about dance and where I dance etc., he wrote his number and contact down and yells at me, " CALL ME, ok? " " ???????? " I said " why?" and I left the bar and tossed the number in the garbage can. I must say, the Occidental park has many adventures, some like this one, but they dp see you, pay attention to you in different ways..even the tourists.. where in the suburb parks, I noticed that some would try VERY HARD to not to notice you.I noticed that. After this session, I changed location and went to train at the Fremont Canal park, directly under the Aurora bridge.I Worked on isolation points.I kept moving my location to where the sun light would hit.I noticed there was a person high above on the mast of the yacht far away on the water.I also saw some people watching me train from some kind of tower building close by, through the blinds, I can see their sillouette.Some friendly joggers smiled while I was training.Many not. Many mother with baby stroller walked by, I can see peripherally. hmm.. this training movements in particular are such subtle and tedious and long that Rex would definitely get bored trying to photograph this! I thought this, and then I took a break.I hope I dont run out of his photos to blog soon! yaay I made it through today, thankyou.

Kids and Dads and Moms and I at Kerry Park

I was supposed to take 3 buses to get to this park but instead I walked a WHOLE LOT and some hills to get to this wonderful City View park on Queen Anne hill. The Photo however on this blog is not the same park photo.It was another frosty adventure with my hands getting stiff but I felt comforted by the childrens laughter and roars and Mothers and Fathers were all out too.Is this the time of year, they are ALL OUT THERE?TOGETHER? It was strange and lovely sight becuase you dont see them all there so frequented. (! )
I heard all the kids conversations as I danced, I must have put myself in the perfect audio-acoustic space in the whole park where it was STEREO.I gently absorbed in their conversations and calling outs to each other as I moved.They said some mean things to each other.And very cute things too.One of the DAd was getting very excited with his Boy kids playing the basket ball shoots and forgot about the tiny little girl.She was saying things that when a person feel betrayed.Today I felt slightly worn out and for some reason,self-conscious when a little child was staring... So much that I started to make my dance PG and PG-13 and not so scary or freaky as normal people say when they see Butoh... at some point I even pretended to be practicing chi-gong and actually REALLY started to practice CHi-gong, and I had to SNAP MY SELF OUT.It was a strange day.. I feel the frozen stiff back muscles, and my right knee getting to me a little bit.People above the park was snapping a lot of photos of the view and I can even hear their conversations Stereo.I had fun once I started to get in the element :) The day was also nice because the sun was out.I am looking forward to the NEw YEars.. and I want to get back to my Aikido classes in Janurary that I started with the combination of my trainings in the mornings.. There are so much I would like to do..!!! Thankyou for today. Hiyaaaaaaaah! ( invisible kick in the cold crisp air )

adventures with cold mornings and Rex

This is the December of 17th, thursday and Rex clicked away all these photographs, its been my tenth session so far.Today we were under the incredible view of the aurora village that is over the lake Union, and it was one of the warmer winter mornings! This here, the picture of the toilet paper in my nose dancing, was one of the painfullest coldest mornings shot by the Fremont canal in bewteen the Adobe office buildings. Rex has used his architectural eye and also playfulness ( he is an architect! ) and continued clicking even when his hands were numb with cold, and my nose wouldnt stop running and running and so I danced with it for a while. I cannot seem to put the pictures elegantly ( Sorry Rex..! ) on this blog without the ugly white spaces...I think I will get the hang of it gradually... so the photo continues below!!
I have so far danced at the Downtown Olympic Sculptural park, in front of the beautiful St. Ignatius church in the Seattle University campus, the Lincoln Reservoir park next to the Velocity Dance Center,In front of the Asian Art Museum, and Occidental Park in Pioneer Square among other places... If anyone out there have more ideas, I would LOVE to get suggestions. For Rex, it would be great if the places have interesting light and design-space possibilities too.I am learning from him about all these things, the design and architechtural perspectives, the lights, shadows, shapes in the black and white photographs. I am very honored!!! The day he could not come was the Occidental park one, which day was it... yes, the 16th...! It was such pouring rain, I splashed from puddle to puddle, my eye makeup was running into my eye and could not see very well. But the sound of the drumming rain, and numbness of cold let me slipped into a state of very clear, pin-drop awareness and I wasin a place my tramatic self was silenced.It was a brief moment but how LOVELY it was!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I had another joyful moment today when I was under the aurora bridge dancing, and my body memories from my movement brought feelings of pain/suffreing and a sense of release and somethinglike acceptance at the same time,again, a brief moments of this journey rushed by.
Thankyou Rex, for today, and thankyou friends, for some comments already! yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay.

My first blog entry

This is my first time starting to blogging about what I do daily, and this winter I decided to start again on a Train-in-the park routine for my Butoh dance practice. I usually practice in a studio, but I ALSO USUALLY PRACTICE IN THE BEAUTIFUL OUTDOORS when I am broke after a big show...and etc. One day I was outside at the Fremont Canal, I met this crazy( sorry, I mean, wonderful )photographer Rex Hohlbein ( which is around December 5th ) while I was training wildly, and I think he seemd to snucked up to me or as if leaped out of no where and clicked some photos with a camera stuck to his face.
He told me later he has thought I was having a seizure or some kind of physical trouble and got worried and came over.But it made me laugh to hear that he brought his CAMERA. That was day one, and he said he would follow me to each morning of my training, and although I appreciated , I was skeptical since I had some funny people express wonderful passionate things like that to sound hardcore, but they never showed up for the deed but
to an amazing surprize, he came the next training... !!!
Monday





This was on Capitol Hill at Lincoln Reservoir park
FREEEZING COLD,













and then ...Tuesday
COLD but SUNNY


















wednesday.... cold FReezing and freezer-sculpture of Noguchi I am leaning on here..
thursday, friday, etc. I will add those photos soon.His photos are so amazing!!! I will go to sleep now.-Haruko