Dance as a Sculpture of Consciousness

“When Michelangelo was asked how he created a piece of sculpture, he answered that the statue already existed within a marble. God had already created the Pieta, David, Moses… Michelangelo's job as he saw it was to get rid of the excess marble which surrounded God's creation.”

Butoh master Akira Kasai describes consciousness as energy. In his Ephesus Eurythmic dance technique, he teaches students to activate inner/outer listening senses and to generate the energy of consciousness. Then, the energy of consciousness moves you. He often discusses with us, “I dance or I am danced”. In Butoh, I have to make myself fully available for that to come in.

I imagine Michelangelo listening internally, so carefully to create the Pieta and David.

In dance, the patterns and habitual movements are the marble, consciousness is the sculptor. It is interesting that in Japanese culture, Goddess “Kannon” writes as “観音” which means the “Seer of Sound”.
A dancer chiseled by the Seer of the Sound...