Support Tiziana Longo' s research and work
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Photo: Yozy Zhang
Photo: G. Cafici
Photo: Yozy Zhang
Photo: Ektor /Lowgraviph
Photo: Yvonne Hartmann
Photo:Daito Noken
Photo: Daito Noken
Photo: Makino Hiroshi
Hi, I am Tiziana.
I am a choreographer, dancer, and dance teacher specializing in butoh.
From 2010 until last year I have been co-director of Motimaru, a company that I was dreaming of since I was in Japan, and into which I put my energies, passion, and many Ideas.
After many beautiful encounters and projects and teachings, I have found myself against the wall between my dreams of art and my life and I had to leave everything in the name of something I discover most important.
So I stopped dancing and I watched what was there.
It is just life that teaches me through suffering and letting go, a new way to be and create.
So since 2023, I am starting again, without having found yet my place to be,
but with a lot of new projects to be developed.
I am in the field of performing Arts for more or less 20 years
I am opening this fundraiser campaign to receive encouragement and some financial support
to be able to keep my precious research, work, and life
alive and bring it further
This fundraiser is to:
-supporting me in a moment of re-definition and re-start
-supporting me in finishing 2 books
-launching a 3 months butoh school in autumn 2023 facing the costs of rent and equipment
-buying a video camera
-create a new design and produce new visit cards and flyers
-supporting my weekly classes live, online, and Intensive Thematic workshops
-supporting my own training and updating
-supporting the creation of a new piece
-finishing in December a specialization in Dance Pedagogy
If you like and believe in my work and dedication I will be happy to tell you more about me and if you can and feel to donate I will be happy to receive your warm support
About me
I come from South Italy, from Riposto, a tiny port town on Sicily Island, the last island of Italy.
My hometown is located between Catania and Taormina, on the coast, surrounded by the beautiful sea and the active volcano Etna.
My Island contains a beautiful tradition of Folklore, literature, puppet theatre, music, dance, painting, and costumes ... that have been neglected and almost put aside, and whose value has been understood and translated into art by a few personalities, such as Pirandello, Maria Rosa Balestreri, Dolce & Gabbana, ...
Everywhere on my Island, you will find statues of the Madonna but rarely people will tell you about their beliefs. When I walk I am scented by mystery and magic. My island is full of wonders.
What is called Folklore there, perceived by the mass as something out of fashion, contains a jewel within.
Maybe because of my roots, I have been myself always interested in the local dimension of things, in the ritual dances, in other spiritual philosophies, and art traditions of the world.
At 18 years old I left the Island to study in the North of Italy. I wanted to be a choreographer and performer.
My course in Performing Arts, at the University of Bologna, was certainly influencing my visions and research, especially on the point of acknowledging the work done in Theater by the disciple of Grotowski, E. Barba, who later conceived an " Anthropology of Theater". In his handbook, he has been collecting elements of performing techniques in Eastern countries as well as in the West.
With this influence, in my fieldwork research made in Asia, in India, Nepal, Bali, and Japan, I have been reading and experiencing in my body other forms of performing arts with oblique eyes and in contextualization.
After a long intellectual circumnavigation through Performing Arts and Eastern philosophies, I arrived in Japan, to the Japanese Butoh dance, a way to read, sense, and live life.
And from a certain perspective, Butoh too has a local folkloristic dimension.
If I close my eye indeed no fine dining restaurant can impress me more than my grandmother's aubergine ball taste.
All that each of us needs is to go back home, whatever it means.
And paradoxically, like a Buddhist koan, I found that home in Kamihoshikawa, at the Ohno's studio, in Japan.
My home has been butoh. But not "the butoh" but what later I discovered "my butoh"
In Yokohama, in Kamihoshikawa, I had the luck of meeting my great teacher, Yoshito Ohno.
I have been living next to Kamihoshikawa, for 5 years in Japan, studying with Yoshito, and then working with him, as a stage assistant and also a simultaneous translator of the ws at the Ohno Studio, as well as in many other countries.
In the history of the Ohno Studio, there have been few foreigners who have moved to Japan only to study butoh for so long, learned Japanese, and totally dedicated themselves to Butoh.
If I turn back, even if I had no resources to stay so long, since it was a call for me, I have found a way to stay, study, and work.
Such a deep experience of butoh in Japan has been touching me and has deeply absorbed me.
After 5 years of full immersion for several reasons, I had to leave and I felt the need
to collect other knowledge, and tools.
So I have started searching not only in butoh and dance but also in Yoga, Somatics, Psychology, Philosophy, Neuroscience, and Newphisics.
My research from the beginning was not about the 'butoh' style itself but about
understanding experientially the essence of this dance, how could its features function on the body, what can be filtered as universal, searching for a methodology to keep searching and to keep alive butoh not only in a Japanese or international concept of butoh but also in a wider concept of "out of butoh". As Yoshito used to tell me: "舞踏舞踏しすぎてちいさい舞踏舞踏しすぎて意味が無い" Butoh for butoh is becoming small and stolen by its meaning
I have dedicated my whole life to this research without reservations or backup plans. I have been sharing my visions, ideas, and funding with the people who I loved, love and my students, in many countries.
If you have experienced my live classes you might like it or not but for sure you will notice that this research is alive in me; it is there just because my life is there and it is in my body and it stays with me.
Nobody can steal it.
It is so ... when water touches you, you get wet,
when love touches your heart you get light.
I was really touched by butoh.
So I invite whoever wants to enrich movement, gesture, presence, and breath in dance and in life, to experience and join my classes, workshops, and intensive programs that start from butoh toward a new approach to dance and theater.
What I can offer is also framing butoh in a wider perspective than butoh into butoh
About my online classes, I would appreciate it if whoever would like to join my class would give a minimum donation per class (1,5h/2h) in the mutual respect of teacher/student, giving/receiving
I will be very happy to accept your generous donation that could support further and encourage my dance and life research.
If you donate I will be thankful if you could specify "donation " and also for what
ex.: "Donation class"; "Donation ws"; "Donation book"; "DonationSchool"
I am looking forward to sharing with you my art, life passion, dream, and funding.
With Love
Tiziana
P.S.
If you want to try my live weekly classes come to join me in Berlin, Tanzfabrik, every Thursday from 20:15 to 21:45; on Mondays from 19:00 to 21:00 in Prenzlauer Berg and from April I will be also offering Improvisation live classes on Wednesday from 19:00 to 20:30 in Prenzlauer Berg and on Tuesday from 19:00 to 20:30 online
zoom link
Join Zoom Meeting
Meeting ID: [phone redacted]
Passcode: LOVE
Meeting ID: [phone redacted]
Passcode: 571561
Find your local number: https://us06web.zoom.us/u/kdKEwTfWqX
Organizer
Tiziana Longo
Organizer
Berlin
