Intensive Butoh Training in Japan

Amber Liberté has been offered an incredible opportunity to train in Butoh (a dance-theatre form from Japan) under one of Japan's masters, Sensei Mushimara Fujieda, and his partner, Sensei Iyuko for an intensive one-month as an initiation into the dance-theatre form. Amber is going to be Sensei Mushimara's last ever student due to him getting too old to be able to teach.

Image of Amber credited to Jocelyn Janon

AMBER LIBERTÉ - Movement Artist, Choreographer, Filmmaker
Amber Liberté is a movement artist, choreographer and filmmaker with an artistic profile that spans ballet, contemporary dance, early stage krump training, and movement in film, theatre, and installations. Amber has worked as a physical performer on notable professional productions including: Minecraft (Warner Brothers), Cowboy Bebop (Netflix), Shut-Eye (Feature Film),  as well as high achievement with her film accolades such as: Better Daze (Top NZ Music Video - Show Me Shorts) and Best Female Work (Clipped Music Video Festival), Cascade (Quarter Finalist in Paris Play Film Festival). In her live performance work, she has performed and choreographed for notable companies and individuals such as: Tino Sehgal, Footnote New Zealand Dance, Dance Plant Collective, Splore Festival, Luma Festival, and recently in her role as programmer for Basement Theatre.

MUSHIMARU FUJIEDA - Dancer (Butoh), Choreographer, Director

Born in Aichi Prefecture of Japan in 1952. Began drama '72. Belonged to drama company "Ishin-ha" '78-'89.Became independent '89.Thereafter, as a solo performer of numerous performances inside and outside of Japan. After receiving the highest praise from American poet, the late Mr. Allen Ginsburg in N.Y. City, Mushimaru gave himself the name "Natural Physical Poet", and since has produced, with his unique style, various dance works. He has held workshops for more than 20 years in Japan, Europe, South Korea, USA, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, the Phillipines and India. Sensei Mushimara will be Amber’s foundational Butoh teacher. He has offered to accept her as his last student and part of his last intake of students.

MAKA SOWAKA / IKUYO (BIO) - Dancer, choreographer
Maka Sowaka (Ikuyo Kobayashi) is a Butoh dancer and choreographer. Maka joined the Mushimaru Fujieda’s dance company “The Physical Poets’’ in 2018 in Japan. She started making her own creations through shamanic dreams and visions and near-death experiences and awakening experiences. Since then, she has worked with Mushimaru, traveled to 20 countries and throughout Japan, sharing her and Mushimaru Fujieda’s expertise. Sensei-Iyuka is the Butoh and life partner of Sensei-Mushimara and will be assisting Amber with bookings, translation, and immersion into the Butoh practice.

KEIO UNIVERSITY 
Keio University Art Center (KUAC) was established in 1993 as a research center attached to the university. KUAC is not aligned to any particular academic field, philosophy, or theoretical method, but rather seeks to understand the role of the arts within contemporary society from a position that synthesizes developments across various academic fields – that is, through taking a cross-disciplinary approach, in line with Keio University’s educational objectives. KEIO University will be part of Amber's initiation into the history of Butoh - before Amber's pilgrimage to Yakushima Island to study with Sensei-Mushimara and Iyuko-San

ELIZABETH DAMOUR - Butoh performer, Event Co-ordinator, Movement Teacher
Elizabeth is a butoh performer and festival organiser for Butoh in France, Switzerland and Japan. She has run workshops as well as participated across Europe and Japan and is passionate about connecting artists across the globe, as well as in the training space. She is a therapist in Psychosomatics at BAAT art therapy in Paris and London, training in mindfulness, the R. Fritz programme, and uses Butoh to help her clients access emotions safely in a therapeutic setting. She also runs Les Imaginaires - mostly in France - which are creative workshops that explore expressive dance, painting, and writing. Elizabeth has been helping Amber connect with Butoh artists in Japan.

This fund from generous donors will cover: 

*Tuition Fees for 1 month
*Living costs (accommodation, food) for 1 month
* Partial transport around the Island for 1 month

Amber will cover: 

* Flights to Japan (valued at $750)
* Flights & a Ferry to Yakushima Island, where the residency is held  (valued at $470)
*Any other costs incurred during this period (costs unknown)

Amber Liberté has been offered an incredible opportunity to train in Butoh under one of Japan's masters, Sensei Mushimara Fujieda, and his partner, Iyuko-San for an intensive one-month as an initiation into the dance-theatre form. 

Butoh is an Avant-Garde art form that began in Japan in the 1950’s after the Hiroshima Disaster. It is aimed at revealing the dance of the unconscious. It’s about movements that are out of socialised norms. Butoh translates to “Dance of Darkness,” with the philosophy that we’re socialised human beings constantly looking for approval, moving in socially acceptable ways. Butoh’s philosophy is to explore deep inside the unconsciousness of the body - to dance with everything we have: the good, the bad, the ugly - and try to transcend it.  It also deeply explores living things' connection with the land.  It encompasses all aspects of the range of human emotions through movement art and allows the artists and audiences alike to explore and transmute the shadow parts of our psyche and subconscious through embodiment. Amber feels that now, more than ever, the world needs to be exposed to, experience, and embody this kind of work.

Sensei Mushimara is in his 70s, and said that because he is getting too old to mentor people, Amber will be his last intake. This is a huge privilege and honour. This will also be Amber's only opportunity to do an intensive long-term study of Butoh in its origin country, as it's the last year Amber was able to get her working holiday visa, which is only valid for 1 year. 

This opportunity is in May, 2025 on Yakushima Island in southern Japan. Interestingly, Yakushima Island is home to a 5000-year-old cedar tree, Jōmon Sugi, which is partnered with Aotearoa's very own Tāne Mahuta in Waipoua Forest. Yakushima Island is also where Princess Mononoke is based - an Anime that focuses on the impacts of climate change and looking after our environment.

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Following this Boosted crowdfunded intensive project, Amber will go to Tokyo to study Neo-Butoh with a practitioner, Sensei-Conan Amok, and spend time integrating her learning from Sensei-Mushimara Fujieda and Sensei Iyuko. After Amber's learning with Sensei-Conan Amok, she hopes to commence further training with Sensi-Mushimara Fujieda and Iyuko-San back on Yakushima Island.

Amber has been training as a dancer since 2006. While she's taken breaks to focus on other parallel career moves such as a B.A. in Acting for stage & screen, a certificate in Personal Training & Group Fitness Instruction, and Level 1 Hanna Somatics, Amber continually comes back to using her body as her main medium of expression. While Amber feels it can leave audiences with some of the most profound experiences watching it, she also believes that as a society, spending time in our bodies is a powerful anti-capitalist and anti-colonial strategy. 

Amber tries to live by her values of empowering others, shown by multiple free resources she created for the dance sector in Aotearoa during lockdowns, as well as her tireless activist work on rates of pay, rallying to have dancers recognised on a governmental level, and in her work for Equity NZ - where she researched the importance and impact of the dance sector.

With the world in a variety of upsets due to political unrest, a recession, wars, and general daily stressors, Amber would like to use this opportunity to gain skills for herself as a dancer and teacher so that she can then share her knowledge with fellow movement artists through: live art, dance films, classes & workshops, and sharing it with people who believe movement is an important catalyst to improving our hauora. Given Butoh's focus on our bodies in relation to the environment, Amber also believes this is an important step to meditating on how we cannot exist without the magnificence of the natural world.

By donating to this, you are helping an artist and activist who has worked incredibly hard to uplift other dancers and performers in the industry a chance to focus on her own arts practice - which she hopes to bring back aspects of and share with Aotearoa's rich, and innovative movement scene, as well as in her fitness and somatic sessions in classes. Butoh is a lifelong practice, and having financial support to dive into this artistic developmental process will mean an Aotearoa artist who cares deeply about our sector can be uplifted to follow something she feels will have lessons in it for all of us.