Workshop Overview:

Vibrant Bodies is a two-day intensive workshop exploring the intersection of Butoh and posthuman se()uality through improvisational movement, embodied research, and guided somatic inquiry.
Butoh, a radical movement practice that emerged in postwar Japan, interrogates the body beyond normative aesthetics—embracing slowness, transformation, and the grotesque. In this workshop, Butoh becomes a gateway into posthuman ways of sensing, moving, and becoming. We will explore what it means to inhabit bodies that are speculative, extra-human, or non-anthropocentric—blurring the boundaries between human, animal, object, and atmosphere.
Posthuman se()uality in this context is not rooted in technologized futures but in radically expanding our capacity for feeling, perceiving, and existing outside of linear time, fixed identity, or human-centered subjectivity. Through movement meditations, visualizations, writing, and experimental improvisations, participants are invited to touch upon other possible anatomies, temporalities, and modes of intimacy.


What We’ll Explore:
• Butoh as a practice of undoing: slowing down, becoming other, dissolving narrative selfhood.
• Embodied posthumanism: inhabiting speculative, hybrid, or non-human bodies through somatic imagination.
• Queer time and nonlinear space: exploring altered temporalities and rhythms through movement.
• Se()uality beyond the human: cultivating intimacy with landscapes, objects, textures, atmospheres, as well as possibly other participants.  
• Improvisation as research: using movement and intuitive inquiry as tools for accessing new forms of embodiment.


Who Is This For?
This workshop welcomes artists, movers, writers, theorists, and curious bodies of all backgrounds. No previous experience with Butoh or dance is required—only a willingness to explore somatic and imaginative processes in an open, experimental environment.


Facilitated by Oryx
Oryx is a Berlin-based interdisciplinary performance artist, movement practitioner, researcher, archivist, and writer. Their artistic work spans contemporary dance, Butoh, immersive theatre, durational performance, and installation art. Drawing on studies in Literature, Art History, and various dance and movement practices, Oryx investigates the embodiment of cultural histories, queer theory, gender and class politics, and psycho-somatics. Their work is often situated in the philosophical and political, using speculative world-building and conceptual writing to reimagine the body and its affective capacities.
 

Practical Details:
• Duration: 2 days
• Location: Observatorio del Placer, Barcelona, Spain
• Dates: 13.-14.06
• Time: 4h per day.
Friday 17:00-21:00;
Saturday 11:00-15:00
•             It is recommended to participate in both days of the workshop, but if this is not possible for you and you still want to participate, you are welcome to request to participate instead on one day.
• Price: Sliding scale 100 – 160 euros; limited solidarity spots available on request
• What to Bring: Comfortable clothing for movement, a notebook, and water.
• Language: The workshop will be held in English, but Oryx is also happy to translate into German or Italian.

 
Registration:
Spaces are limited.
Early registration is recommended.