Yumiko Yoshioka Body Resonance – based on Butoh and Organic Movement
photo: Raul_Bartolome
Body Resonance – based on Butoh and Organic Movement
Workshop dates: August 14th-16th 2026. Friday Aug 14th 6-9pm, Sat Aug 15th 11-3pm, Sunday Aug 16th 2-6pm.
Location: Joe Goode Annex San Francisco
Registration/tickets Early registration is open, ticket price will increase after July 1st (date extended) Single days available July 15th.
limited WEX and BIPOC scholarships available email: butohcontact@gmail.com
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The main focus of this workshop is a conscious research of our body/mind/soul unification, so we can deeply enjoy the intrinsic process of metamorphosis in the spirit of dance. Through a continuous exploration of our past collective memories, we can strike a vein of abundant creative resources, enriching the essence of our life. The body is a receptacle of time.
Body resonance is a key to opening up the doors of an ever-changing world inside and outside of ourselves, which helps the body to unfold its secrets, holding them up until they shine and tremble.
Everything is in resonance with each other. Through a dialogue with our body, we can learn to be moved by inner and outer forces, thus realizing we are a part of the Universe. A dance of metamorphosis inevitably appears.
Workshop Content:
Organic Movement (release exercises), inspired by Noguchi Taiso (Gymnastics), Taichi and Yoga such as figure 8, waves, water ball rotation, hanging body,
breathing exercises AUN
dynamic training for the flow of energy
Butoh-related work (sensitization, combination of image and movement with antenna exercises, such as animal, insect, snake, witch and fairy, the creatures inside us, walking, dialogue with a partner etc)
structured improvisation and choreography
Bio: YUMIKO YOSHIOKA – JAPAN / BERLIN
Yumiko Yoshioka is a Japanese Butoh dancer and choreographer. Yumiko is a former member of Ariadone, the first female Butoh company, which was founded by Ko Murobushi and Carlotta Ikeda in 1973. In 1978, she performed with Carlotta and Ko in Paris ” Le Dernier Eden- Porte de L’Au-Dela “, the very first Butoh performance to be presented in a public theater outside Japan. In 1988, Yumiko founded THEATRE DANCE GROTESQUE with fellow Butoh artist Minako Seki and delta RA'i in Berlin (1988-1996). In 1989 she started to develop and teach her own form of bodywork. The approach became a pillar of her career as a reflection of her profound understanding of the importance of deepening consciousness of the body, not only in order to dance and express but also to illuminate our daily life, opening ourselves to the deeper layers of our inner world and rediscovering a subtle beauty in each moment. The strength of this perception led her to create her own method of bodywork, called “Body Resonance."
Between 1995 and 2015, she was a core member of TEN PEN CHii art labor, an interdisciplinary and experimental art formation, as a dancer and a choreographer along with JoaXhim Manger (visual artist) and Zam Johnson (composer and musician). Yumiko is also the key founder of the storied eX..it! Dance eXchange Festival at Schloss Bröllin.
Since 2015, she has been working as a solo dancer and a choreographer. She has also set up various collaborative projects across Europe such as with Gest-Azione, with Annalisa Maggiani from Italy; and dance creations with Rena Konstantaki from Greece. She has been a supervisor of “Butoh Lab Camp” project in Romania since 2021. Her workshop “Body Resonance, based on Organic Movement and Butoh” is invited to many countries across the globe.
A chapter highlighting Yumiko’s career is featured in Bruce Baird’s newest book A HISTORY OF BUTŌ in which he writes that “Yumiko is an important proponent of mixed media butô through her dance company TEN PEN CHIi and one of the dancers who has most embodied what it means to practice butô as an itinerant woman. Yoshioka keeps up a grueling schedule of international travel teaching butô workshops around the world and also organized the eX..it! butô festival, bringing butô and dancers of other styles of dance in contact with each other…Whether by artists traveling to her or, as is much more often the case, Yoshioka traveling to artists, she has provided numberless dancers and artists with chances to ‘ex- change, ex- perience, ex- plore, and ex- it’ out of themselves and be changed in the process.”