Bronwyn Preece

Two performers.  Two women. Two slips.  Two streaks of white paint.  Two cameras.  Two portraits [of self] from Two countries, across One border, under One new moon.

Commencing in June 2021, at the exact appointed time of the dark moon (be it in the wee hours of the morning, or mid-way through a class we are teaching), collaborators Bronwyn Preece (British Columbia, Canada) and Rosemary Candelario (Texas, United States) each take a black and white portrait selfie of themselves.  They each wear an identical white dress and don a single white streak of butoh paint somewhere on their bodies.

They are loosely holding and responding to the overarching question ‘what am i/we birthing?’

The two women then each screenshot the GPS compass coordinates of where they happen to be at that moment.  They instantly email both the photo and coordinates to the other, who immediately creates a haiku in response, which they then send back. 

This trans-national poetic-photographic exchange is a year-long, durational project –- (currently ongoing, June 2021-June 2022) – over fourteen moons – with the cumulative goal to create a multi-media performance space built from the images and words collected, within which the two will perform together, in person …

A simple frame. 

And an evocative premise through which we will reflect in these Artist Pages – mid-project – on how we relate it (or not) to developing sustainable performance-creation processes …

The writing becomes a limbed extension – a dance – inked on shore and paper by a body moving in these artist pages. The author poetically captures the process of engaging in the 22nd annual Kokoro Dance Theatre Society’s Wreck Beach Butoh Intensive: a 9-day in-studio period, followed by 3 outdoor performances: on the shores and in the waters of Vancouver, Canada’s Pacific Ocean. Preece captures the days in a poem, synthesizing felt experience with elements of the daily choreography and context, offering palpable, personal and sensual tellings of one woman moving through process, practice and performance. Although specific, the poems remain accessible – interpretable and relatable to the reader—as fresh offerings, as movements themselves.

This post is to direct you to my chapter in the Routledge Companion to Butoh Performance (edited by Rosemary Candelario and Bruce Baird).  The chapter contains a series of 12 poems documenting my immersive experience as a participant in Kokoro Dance Theatre Society's 2016 Annual Wreck Beach Butoh Intensive in Vancouver, BC, Canada.  Please access book from your university library and find it here: https://www.routledge.com/The-Routledge-Companion-to-Butoh-Performance/Baird-Candelario/p/book/9781138691094

I had the honour to guest-edit a special-themed journal issue for the CSPA (Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts) titled 'dis/sustain/ability'...I include here the short introductory editorial I wrote...the full issue is available here: http://www.magcloud.com/browse/issue/1374151

Sol • Sticed ABSTRACT … sunrise… 7:13a.m.… light… shadow… birdsong… alarm clock… lunar rhythms… solar spectrums… reveal(s)… bark… branch… waking disclosure… douglas fir resonance…. perceptions… temporal tugs… skin… bone… touching touch… 8:02a.m.… arbutus prisms… invisible draws… captured… cedar moments… fleeting… 3:57a.m. … 'to listen to the forest is also, primordially, to feel oneself listened to by the forest, just as to gaze at the surrounding forest is to feel oneself exposed and visible, to feel oneself watched by the forest' 1 … 5:11a.m.… solstice… chiasmic prism… transparent striations… climatic metronomes… captured lichen… f-stop automated… global mover… motion caught… sunset… 5:58p.m.…equinox… breathing breath….visible… durationally wrapped… pine… witnessed witnessers… 7:31p.m.… apple orchard… sidewalk heaver… night… seasonal pulsing… concrete cruncher… 8:12p.m.… reciprocal arborealographers….

Keywords: butoh, site-specific performance and dance, poetic enquiry, performative writing, ecological performance, reflexive phenomenology
Abstract: [stories]… conjugating butoh … go, how? … creviced articulations of (academic) bodies morphing … a corporeal text … a table of contents of the poetic performa-tive … performing poet … an exegesis of arriving : humbled leavings … nuanced sea/landscape … evocations of site … of dance … word waves … always questioning … white sandy grit (in teeth and crotch : … poetic scholarship) … verbing …

A performer's poems: written from the precarious and fragile, evocative alchemistic moments that butoh (re)presented for me…on this day, in and for that moment. Penned immediately following three consecutive day, outdoor events, these words capture my body-as-participant in Kokoro Dance's 19th Annual Wreck Beach performances, Vancouver, Canada (July 2014). The poems chart the subtle fluidity and changing landscape – internally/externally – of each fresh performance. Performing in the waters of British Columbia's west coast was particularly resonant following the Fukushima disaster (directly relating 'our' butoh back to its origins as a response to the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) – and these poems capture in their essence one woman's quest to understand and relate to the built and the meltdown of 'environment' through a somat-ically, embodied ecological perspective. Embedded and woven through these lines are references specific to choreographic elements of the piece, the location, the timing and/or local Indigenous Musqueam legends….from the Argentina vs. Germany World cup, to the sand dunes, to Xe-ls, the Creator… their imbrication enlivens the congruency of what was birthed on the beach, and the particulars are designed to conflate our understanding of the potency (and urgency) demanded of our/this place and time. My poetry is movement, simultaneously holding within its lexicon a tension between understanding, applicability, the local and the universal. My poetry is a butoh dance open to your interpretation. I offer it as a gift….

The Tsk Tsk Revue has become an annual one-night event—perhaps now more accurately described as a phenomenon—in the 350-peopled, entirely off-the-grid island of Lasqueti, BC, developing into a Gulf islands’ touring show. Teeming with brazen backwoods humour and localized, alternatively-powered erotics, the Tsk Tsk Revue has rightfully earned a unique place on the national burlesque scene. The show spins both the term sexy and the status quo on their heads, highlighting the often-absurd moments of choosing to live off-the-grid and translating the many challenges that face the islanders into comedic fodder. Staging innovative low-tech stage tropes, costumes, and black light burlesque through a series of vignettes strung together by the colourful commentary of the show’s creator and hostess, Jenny Vester, the Tsk Tsk Revue continually pushes the limits and tests one remote little island’s limits.

Illustrating how Merleau-Ponty’s enigmatic phenomenology lends itself beautifully to both theatrical and ecological analysis, this essay examines how his work heralds a call to engage with our world on an embodied, improvisatory level. Exploratory improvisation and Merleau- Ponty’s phenomenology mitigate notions of distance into a causal relationship towards (re)engaging wholeness, by inviting the sensuous intimacies of interaction: with ourselves, with each other, with earth.... in distance, in proximity. Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology must be embodied and experienced with a consciousness, an alertness and perceptive awareness of the act of engagement. The call to action by Merleau-Ponty begets an improvisatory eco- theatre; however it is not a move towards environmental activism. This paper illustrates how improvisation is a means to experientially make clear this delineation, which is crucial to overcome the dichotomies of separation and otherness that have been so entrenched in the Western world. Re-engaging our sensitivity of improvising as tool for survival, in a world where our sensitivities are all too often socially-placated and dulled is where the work of Merleau-Ponty and where theatre can be an active tool for re-imagining a future, our future. Merleau-Ponty’s eco-theatre is holistic, is inclusive and is most definitely a form of activism (or act-of-vision): a phenomenology that, properly and fully grasped, can be embodied through a ‘theatrical’ practice, specifically through exploratory improvisation.

Abstract: Performing the Ecology of Place: Embodying an Eco-Cultural 'Living History' on Lasqueti Island/Xwe'etay[i] involved the creation of a one-time cross-generational, outdoor, community performance event that endeavored to allow for a deeper understanding of the relationships locals held with the place and culture in existence on the unique ‘off-the-grid’ island of Lasqueti/Xwe'etay, in the area now recognized by many as British Columbia, Canada.

In the Spirit of Homebirth: Modern Women, an Ancient Choice, weaves together intimate stories of birth and community written by mothers, partners, doulas, midwives and children from the rocky shores, remote towns and cities of British Columbia, Canada.
Bronwyn’s collection of prose, poetry, photography and illustrations contributes to a renewed understanding of, and confidence in, women’s natural abilities to birth, creating transformative options for individuals and communities worldwide. The National Institute for Health and Care Excellent (NICE) in the UK recently released a report stating that midwife-care is safer than hospital care, and the United States Center for Disease Control and Prevention estimates a 55% increase in homebirths in the United States between 2004 and 2013. Inspired by Ina May Gaskin’s Spiritual Midwifery, Preece’s work gathers the vulnerable stories of powerful individual birthing experiences—from euphoric water births in supportive communities, to the overcoming of unexpected difficulties.
At the heart of this work is the conviction that women helping other women give birth is an ancient choice rather than a rogue, medically irresponsible idea. Bronwyn Preece places lived experiences at the center of her work, reminding us of the strength of women as mothers, caretakers and storytellers.