Butoh and the Business of Human Rehabilitation
Butoh Mutations Series 2026
This year we offer 5 London workshops, and one residential retreat in subarctic Sweden.
Butoh Mutations combines dance, art & spiritual practice.
London dates:
8 February 11am – 6.00 pm
15 March 10.30am – 5.30 pm
5 July 10.30am - 5.30pm
3-4 October 11.00am - 6.00pm
13 December 10.30 am - 5.30 pm
'What if we were the end ones?'
Residential Retreat
📍 Moskosel Creative Lab, Sápmi, Northern Sweden
📅 April 17–25, 2026
Butoh Mutations 2026 series in London
“I am a body shop; my profession is the business of human rehabilitation, which goes today by the name of dancer.”— Tatsumi Hijikata
This year we offer you a series of workshops and dance gatherings exploring dance as a practice of rehabilitating collective consciousness through myth, ritual, and embodied imagination.
The series takes place at Colet House, London, with an optional Arctic residential retreat in April 2026, hosted by Northern Sustainable Futures in Sweden.
What is Butoh, and why is it relevant today?
Born in postwar Japan, Butoh emerged as a dance of revolt — responding to the devastation of war, the trauma of nuclear catastrophe, and the rapid spread of American consumer culture. Often described as a Rebellion of the Body, Butoh was shaped by influences from Surrealism, literature, painting, and German Expressionist dance.
For its founder, Tatsumi Hijikata, Butoh was a form of rehabilitation. He drew inspiration from the “dirty work” of garages and body shops, from manual labour, street life, and bodies that could not — or would not — move to the tempo of Japan’s so-called economic miracle.
To rehabilitate means to make fit or suitable. But the question remains:
What embodied practices make us fit for the ecological, political, and emotional conditions of our time?
Also known as the Dance of Darkness, Butoh invites us to listen deeply — to sensation, to slowness, to what moves beneath conscious intention. Through embodied listening, we encounter elemental forces, ancestral memory, and the imaginal realm already alive in the tissues of the body. The dance is not imposed; it is already happening, coursing through breath, blood, and cellular life.
This London series unfolds across the year, with each workshop building on the last, while also remaining open to those who wish to attend individual sessions. For participants seeking deeper immersion, this year, participants are invited to deepen this work as a part of a community of embodied explorers, through an intensive residential retreat in Sápmi (Swedish Arctic lands), exploring themes of endings, collapse, and renewal in close relation to landscape.
About Colet House, London
Colet House is home to The Study Society for Nonduality, a long-established community dedicated to syncretic spiritual research. Founded by mystic philosopher P.D. Ouspensky, author of The Fourth Way, Colet House has a long history of inquiry into consciousness, embodiment, and inner work.
It is also the London home of the Butoh Mutations project, which forms part of Colet House’s contemporary offering of spiritual study and embodied research.
What to expect
Participants can expect a mix of guided practice, creative exploration, and ritual dance, including:
Warm-ups blending Japanese release techniques, energy work, and dance and movement research.
Introductions to animist practices, spiritual inquiry, and sensorial research prompts
Butoh techniques focused on inner landscape and micro-movement, cultivated through ekāgratā (one-pointed attention)
Creative movement through imagery and live choreography that channels elemental forces
Improvisation and ritual dances in solo, paired, and group forms
Developing an attitude of self-remembering rather than spectating, through the role of the loving witness, supporting one another’s processes and transformations
No prior dance experience is required — all levels are welcome.
Your guide
Dominique Savitri Bonarjee is an artist, writer, and experienced facilitator. She has studied long-term with first- and second-generation Butoh dancers, and is the author of Butoh as Heard by a Dancer (Routledge, 2024). She holds a contemporary art PhD focused on developing a spiritual-ecological embodied research methodology and has extensive experience leading large groups in intensive settings, including the durational performance Collapse. Her practice combines Butoh’s discoveries with eco-somatic and spiritual traditions, offering a contemporary path, less focused ob performance and more on embodied inquiry, ritual, and our relations with the more-than-human.
