Overview of Kenzo’s Workshop “ Vitalizing the Invisible "

Take a deep breath, hold it in, and re(in)form yourself. This simple, yet deeply utilized way of getting to know oneself better, is one of Kenzo Kusuda’s pre-dance warm-up techniques which exploit the realm of, what I call, ‘tactile sensationalism’. Let me portray what might have initially appeared peculiar to the workshop participants and give some insights to such an abstract but physically appealing way of movement interaction.

In his style of playing with movement, Kenzo teaches the workshop participants how to specify one’s attention in relation to the body parts and how to experience yourself through feeling. By letting everybody touch, pat, fondle or stroke one’s own body part Kenzo stimulates their bodily knowledge not less than the following it, relaxation effect. The soothing effect arises as if the presence of all just discovered little ‘constituents’ of ourselves were giving the participants the feeling of reassurance that ‘everything is alright’, ‘everything is where it is supposed to be’, ‘the way I am built is the right way ‘, or ‘this is me, here and now’. With all the experiences inside, the body becomes refreshingly open to the ‘new’. Both, the bodily insight and the outside participate in being oneself.

Cool and open, full of just invited-in air and aware of a shared space, Kenzo demonstrates how to willingly share the air, the sight, the sound and the smell with others around. The participants calmly assume the inviting attitude and, with hope for a pleasing outcome, slowly step into a common experience. Body part after body part. From the deep up to the deep bottom. Individually but together, everybody extends their bodily knowledge and levels up the awareness as the mind/imagination suggests. Assuming and incorporating the existing whereabouts of whatever body part they touch, they feel, or imagine to feel. The technique stresses the awareness of the ‘outskirts’ of the body, tips, nails, hair, the joints, and builds up a detailed picture of oneself. Detailed and infinite, the created bodily image is kept open and hospitable to the outside space, admitting that the outside space constructs us as much as we construct our mental image of it.

Timing the breath, making use of silences, they acute other senses in a form of a creative cooperation with yourself and the whole surrounding. They concentrate on every, otherwise inconspicuous, move or a stretch or a shake, allowing thus to become an active mediation between their bodies and a filled space. Kenzo makes use of this cooperation and mutual dependence by letting all parts of the body feel the breathing as well as letting all the parts of the body do the breathing imaginatively. This enables a skill of constituting the space better, shifting the senses’ acuteness from an inside to the intimate around, and further on, to the outside, to what is beyond the performing space and beyond ourselves. Little effort produces a rich experience by working out the ‘uncared for’, ordinarily insignificant details of what constructs our realities.

Collecting energies from the invited-in air, let it pervade the body and let it strengthen up on its way to fill up the lungs. All this, to let the participants experience the breathing process like a sponge, soaked with some energetic potential, awaiting a squeeze, a relief coming with the breath-out.

The visualization techniques (a good-eye contact with other participants as well as with the space) are meant to accumulate energies of the ‘friendly others’. This speechless bodily/physical exchange builds up the feeling of spatial unity, of being the part of the space which is not limited by the frames of our physicality.

Giving the space what we have best, our inner friendly feelings, follows up with massaging the space with our own, moving in it, bodies. The technique provides again, a metaphorical experience of a spatial relationship (nevertheless rooted in our physicality), a rediscovery of a new body, a new spatial identity. This attempt of ‘performing the being’ is constructed on feeling more, hearing more, sensing more, letting more in, concentrating on seemingly unimportant and allowing it to influence our own awareness.

This tactile experience, built upon a local bodily feel/touch, upon letting feel and letting be felt, ignites the senses. It initializes the sensual appreciation by little physical input and by converting the energies. It wakes up the commonly, wrongly assumed silence and lets it speak via our controlled spatial attention and mental/physical hospitality. It learns to appreciate the ‘neglected’. "

( text written by: Nuska Peszke / 2007. )