composition, decomposition, combination

For dancers, people curious and enthusiastic to move, interdisciplinary artists, philosophers, pedagogues, facilitators, the ecosexy, butoh lovers and curious, humans looking to mix and remix all the challenging and beautiful facets of life . . .

In COMPOST MIX REMIX, we dance to sense the process of combining and evolving the ancient natural physical body with the contemporary layers of private and public media and memories. Looking for new mixes, release, pleasurable confrontations, and processes.

This work is inspired by Min’s choreographic research and performances, where they worked with repetition and evolution of one personal theme in the body in changes/cycles over 7 years, as well as fusing with JINEN butoh nature practices of butoh master, Atsushi Takenouchi that bring together the personal and universal senses of nature.

We will start with relaxing, releasing, and activating movements, building into dances that are physical and internal then external and relational again.  

All bodies are welcome, interested in exploring depths with movement. Practices are open for all levels of experience and differently-abled bodies. Feel free to reach out with other questions~

The workshop days will include slow and active movements, as well as spaciousness for integration, trying out, and rest.

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Movers shared that this workshop shared poetic and imaginative ways of moving with nature metaphors,  that can be expansive, deep, and fun. They can feel the older practices for dance and meditation being evolved to integrate our contemporary lives of info, public media, and closeness and farness of what happens around the world~~~ for example, in being curious about our relationships to phones and dancing what is realistic, unrealistic, hyperexaggerated, theatrical, and subtle in our lives when we are alone, online, and together.  Movers also found it compelling to dig and research into their own patterns and cycles, and find the different ingredients that would allow them to compost.  In the workshop, nonverbal ways of communicating can allow for subconscious and emotions and ways of relating to emerge and bodies could feel, explore, and research in the temporary community.

Butoh dance started as a way of processing all the deaths after WWII. As my teacher shares, we dance to dance with the nature that makes us, All. Compost Mix Remix, is a new remix of ancient, natural, and the now with the paradoxes of being with the possibilities of expansion with connections to nature and the depths and layers and new emerging with emotions, beauty, atrocities, personal, world, relational, and imagined new fields. This workshop experience is a love letter for living and moving with the process, mystery, experimenting with old and evolving values between the earthy gutteral, and expansive sky, with our social realities, inner worlds and imagination, ...


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The movement scores will be inspired by long form evolution, repetition, and changes in the body from Min’s dance research, as well as fusing with JINEN butoh nature practices of butoh master, Atsushi Takenouchi that bring together the personal and universal senses of nature.

*** note

With an intentional and strong container for depth, beauty, and multi-sensory awareness, this will be a place for artistic processing, and not necessarily therapy although no doubt art can be therapeutic. We will encourage community support and Min will be open to talk during some of the breaks.

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WORDS ABOUT MIN’S WORKS AND HOLDING SPACE:

“It was one of the most personal and equal challenging butoh trainings that ive experienced, while being in a caring, open environment. I think one goes in hand with another which was a very imaginative creation (by Min) that had lead our diverse movements. We were travelling through movies, natural spaces, internal pressures, unusual characters and more, being connected bodies of intensities and its opposites. It was so much, leaving ideas for further practice.”
- MARTINA, dancer 


“A profound journey with and through the (individual & collective) body, psyche and nervous system. My body continues to buzz from the opportunity to embrace exhaustion, rage and uncertainty.

Min is a super skilled facilitator, both in their composition of the workshop, where each exercise as well as the entire weekend moved through really effective arches, and in their adaptability to the needs of the group. They also adapted all the exercises to accommodate my injured foot, and I never felt left out just because I couldn't really stand/walk-- I wish more dancers would embrace creating accessible movement spaces that celebrate the ways that vastly different bodies, abilities and skillsets can move and create magic together<3”
- ZOYA, dancer


“Mins way of facilitating ring and stirr something in the deeper layers of the soul, the layers where consciousness meets subconcious meets body. Something primal yet complex. Something not moral, not binary. Maybe previous lifes, maybe a collective archetypal subconcious. Maybe just something you've seen in a movie. Your body knows. Their work led us into fleshy, bizarre, violent, playful, angelistic, posthuman embodiment - choreographing a requiem, a musical for a dying world that still is tenderly lovable.

Out of the comfort zone into an individual and collective journey. Lunching into muddy waters. A purge that leaves you alive and transparent. Artfully crafted and served with care.

Mixing philosophy with pop culture with social media with earthy intuition, razorsharp precision, a strong political stance and deep, fierce passion.

That was so good. Go for it, if you have the chance.”
- JUL, dancer


“I was surprised, touched, and carried through this experience, within the gentle, fluid container that Min created for us. I found new parts of myself and reconnected with old ones, stripping away the facade of who I wanted others to see and revealing the parts of me that have always tried to hide. I will forever remember this experience, which has opened doors for me as to what movement can look like and be.”
- JEN, mover, writer


“Min facilitated sessions which included written reflections, storytelling, expressive movement, movement based in imagery and imagination, interview-type conversations, and drawing. The range of activities meant that an idea seeded in one area could move to another, and another, and eventually become something very different in form, yet connected in concept, to the initial inspiration. This experience, guided and supported by Min, invited (but never forced) me into the depths of memory and psyche, alternative movement pathways, and new perspectives. I experienced emotional opening and relief as a result of working with Min and a shift in how I related to old stories about my life and my body. The research felt important to my healing process and also empowered me to show up differently– more aware, present, and understanding– in my relationships. While no two sessions were alike, I always felt held in the patient and loving container that Min created.”
- NICOLA, dancer

ARTISTS BIO

Min Yoon tr. Citizen Truth | dancetotheedge.com + insta @dancetotheedge

With butoh dance, vocals, and conflict studies, Min makes intimate, surreal, and psychosomatic performances and experiences of heightened relational emotions, permission for depths, and the emergent new. Min dances difficult truths beyond language through plurality of perspectives, unintentional movements within stillness and impulsive improvisation, and archetypes. Their dance collages intense imagery and physicality, stillness, and ritual.

Min has been mixing butoh dance, conflict studies, and somatic therapy to bring workshops to communities in Berlin, Vienna, Basel, Ii, SF, Portland, LA, and more cities as well as off the map places. Min teaches workshops as well as creates experimental community performances in artistic institutions and community spaces.

Recent works switch between listening to their own body and the bodies of others. Their current solo work dancing-being-in-time depicts loops of movements, vocal tremors, and memories, with the body as an archive of pain, states, and transformation. In dancing with violence, they researched the bodily memories of violence of another dancer to create an auditory theater piece that invites the listeners to move and lightly embody the experiences poetically. In solo dance works, they connect conflicts within the body to archetypes and collective experiences, such as the Joker archetype and feelings of remorse at the edge of revenge, and comfort women (forced prostitutes of the Japanese army) as an older archetype engaging with the #metoo movement. In their choreographic experiments, they question how bodies respond and move together in groups, how we may find instinctual ways to move together beyond how our bodies were trained.

In Germany, Min danced at Dock11, Hošek Contemporary Gallery, Oyoun, ZK/U, Petersburg Arts Space, Trauma Bar und Kino (in residency), Kühlspot Social Club, p7 Gallery, Haus der Statistik, and 4fürtanz (leipzig). In the U.S. Min danced at CounterPulse (sf), Headwaters Theater (pdx), ProArts Gallery (sf), Highways Performance Space (la), Epic Immersive (sf). Min also dances in the streets and many underground community spaces as well as in churches and a temple devoted to Minerva in Italy.

Min’s performances and social art works have been funded by NATIONALES PERFORMANCE NETZ (npn) in Germany, Dachverband Tanz Deutschland, Kultuuri Kaupilla in Finland, The City of Oakland, The Battery Club of San Francisco, and the Awesome Foundation, with other artist residencies and grants. Min has also been a fellow at Zentrum für Kunst und Urbanistik (ZK/U Berlin) and an artcorps scholar at the Tamalpa Institute founded by Daria and Anna Halprin.

image of pine cone that only flowers, after a fire, by mrg

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