Butoh & Embodied Research Workshops
Expanding the legacy of Butoh with classes in London, Berlin and internationally
Classes, Workshops, Events
Join our workshops to explore somatic practices and deepen your understanding of the body in contemporary Butoh art and dance.
Dark Dance Ritual
November 2025
Weekend Workshop with Dominique Savitri Bonarjee
📍 The Study Society, Colet House, London
📅 November 15–16, 2025 | 10:30–17:30
What if we were the end ones?
Sapmì Sweden 2026
Residential Workshop with Dominique Savitri Bonarjee
📍 Moskosel Creative Lab, Norbotten, Sweden
📅 April 17–25, 2026 | residential
What if we were the end ones?
What would we want to learn, what memories of our bodies would we want to cherish as we shift into other modes of consciousness? How can we prepare to become other, even other-than-human — and how can we be reborn, again and again?
This residential workshop follows a pedagogy of staying with the trouble, drawing us out of patterns and expectations into an embodied engagement with uncertainty and the unknown. Rooted in Butoh’s exploration of darkness, shadow, and the unconscious, we will dive into the molecular world of sensation, exploring embodiment as a way to face death — and through it, eternity.
Held in Sapmì, surrounded by forests, lakes, and the aurora borealis, our gathering becomes a threshold space for ritual, imagination, and renewal.
The workshop unfolds through:
Meditation, warm-ups, and somatic inquiry.
Imaginal work, improvisation, and dance.
Ritual-making through micro-phenomenology, poetry, chant, and embodied research.
Explorations of death and rebirth rituals, mutating traditions in dialogue with the Sapmì landscape.
A final collective sharing and witnessing of our imaginal discoveries.
Participate in an Embodiment Hackathon, deep dive with the Embodied Theory Lab research workshops, and learn about cross-discilinary gatherings that unpack the fascinating intersections of Butoh, embodiment theory, non-linear time, electronics and biofeedback sensors, computational technologies and AI.
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Embodiment Hackathon
One-to-one sessions with Savitri
Early Bird: £ 130.00 until 21 October 2025 / £ 160.00 thereafter.
If you are student with valid ID please contact us for student rates.
A ritual transforms time into embodied experience. It gathers gestures, modes of attention, sensorial contact with votive objects, and breath or chant as a way to commune with ambient entities — weather, season, place. Rituals unfold in spaces that hold ancestral knowledge: temples, forests, rivers, and the body itself. As the year draws to a close, it is a time to ritualize, to re-member the course life has flowed, and to inscribe its lessons within the body.
Dark Dance Ritual is a two-day workshop led by Dominique Savitri Bonarjee, guiding participants through her mutations of Butoh dance and embodied philosophy. The work draws inspiration from months of research into India’s ancient water rituals, especially the Ganga Aarti of Varanasi.
Together we will explore how to weave ritual with co-choreographers: the five cosmic elements, the haptics of materials, and the cultivation of sacred relation with a nonhuman entity (such as a body of water, a river). This is a practice of deep listening — to the times that have pooled into our bodies, and to the world’s memory carried in elemental flows. These explorations become seeds for personal rituals of transformation, to be shared and witnessed collectively.
Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata urged artists “to eat of the darkness within their own bodies.” This darkness is the fertile zone of the subconscious, of dream, imagination, and the imaginal vastness. From here, we nurture our existence and our agency to remain alive to the world — despite the violence, crises, and fear that mark our times.
The workshop unfolds through:
Warm-ups blending Japanese and Daoist somatic techniques, meditation, and practices of embodied listening and sensorial inquiry.
Animist rituals from Indian indigenous traditions and Japanese Shugendō.
Elemental gestures and imagery evolving through Butoh-fu (poetic choreographies).
Ritual-making with drawing, prayer, poetry, chant, and improvisation.
A collective activation on the final day, where personal rituals are witnessed and shared.
The workshop takes place in the vast historic top studio of Colet House, home to The Study Society — a centre of nondual spiritual practice founded by P.D. Ouspensky, author of The Fourth Way. An evocative setting for this dance of shadows and renewal as the year comes to a close.
Dominique Savitri has studied with seminal Butoh dancers in Japan and is the author of Butoh as Heard by a Dancer (Routledge, 2024). Her practice of “mutation” evolves Butoh beyond its postwar origins, entwining eco-somatic approaches with ancient wisdom traditions to open pathways of communion with the nonhuman and the elemental.
No prior dance experience is required — all levels are welcome.
I offer tailored one-to-one sessions in embodied inquiry, somatic healing, and imaginal energy pedagogies, drawing on Tai Chi–inspired creative movement practices and decades of experience with Butoh, ritual, and improvisation. These can online or in-person.
These sessions can support:
Artists, dancers, and performers seeking mentoring and guidance in developing their practice.
Individuals wishing to reconnect with the body as a source of healing, imagination, and transformation.
Anyone curious about exploring movement as a path toward self-knowledge, creativity, and renewal.
Sessions are flexible and shaped around your needs. Group sessions can also be arranged at a reduced rate.
Rates start from £40/hour (with flexibility for artistic projects).
Please contact me directly with your inquiry and to discuss what feels right for you.
See testimonials below. Please send an email for questions and bookings.
Chi & Eco-Harmonics
Energy Ecology and Wu-Wei through Wudang Tai Chi Chaun
Creative eco-somatics weekly group combining elements of Taoist martial arts, Tai Chi and Qi Gong. We will practice the traditional forms and in the last half hour, expand upon the them to improvise with our own ecopoetic imaginaries, as a way to practice embodied resonance and harmony.
Online, Wednesdays 10–11.30am UK time
Starting 1 October
£ 10 / class (when booked as a set of 4) £ 12.50 drop-in.
Email us to join the class.
I had long been intrigued by butoh but struggled to find the right teacher in London. After a life-changing spine injury, I decided to join Dominique’s classes, seeking a way to reconnect with my body. Dominique’s deep dedication to butoh, her training with the masters and the beautiful room we were learning in immediately put me at ease. Her teaching revealed a new philosophy of movement that transformed my relationship with my post-injury body. I would urge everyone, no matter their age or ability, to explore butoh in Dominique’s classes—you will no doubt uncover something amazing.
- Keira Johnson, professional dancer
Testimonials
"For me, the whole experience cannot be easily described with words, that's how fascinating it is! The space where I could connect to my humble - self. The dance/movement is a kind of deep listening that is not for expressing myself, it is to dissolve the ego and compromise with a sense of “self"."
- Tu Perkins
"Dominique creates a unique situation in her classes in which she shares her extensive understanding of the practice and history of Butoh along with a range of other practices in response to the needs and interests of members of the class. She creates and maintains a beautiful balance between leading and sensitively inter-acting with us, individually and as a group: allowing us all to enquire into ourselves and our world, to work closely with others, and to feel supported and facilitated in doing so under her guidance. I’ve been attending Dominique’s class for over a year; I signed up originally because my first (very good) experience of Butoh was attending a 3-day workshop led by another teacher (at another venue) and I wanted to find a regular class. I value the weekly classes being a regular part of my life (and miss them during breaks!) Dominique’s classes have had a liberating effect on me; I have felt the effect of them develop week on week and they continue to impact on, and benefit, both my physical and psychological wellbeing."
- Jane Wildgoose, artist and historian
"Participating in Dominique's Butoh course was a most rewarding experience. Her skilled and gentle guidance into explorations based on images and movements opened up in me areas and insights that were new to me and utterly fascinating - truly a deep and enjoyable learning experience. I very much hope that she will soon offer another course or a series of classes and workshops at Colet House."
- Klaus, bookseller
Get In Touch
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