In Mammu’s workshop we integrate butoh and practices based on somatic movement  (BMC) and Asian Wisdom Traditions (Qigong, asahi, taoyoga). The aim of these practices is to finetune the embodied sensing of inner and outer space and the shared space we are moving in. Embodied, cellular imagination and intra-active dance that forms out in an ongoing moment, sponging with inner and outer spaces, resonance and constantly changing ma 間 will be important themes in this workshop.

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"My activity as an artist and teacher is permeated by somaticity. To me, it means that teaching and working with the work group aims to strengthen the agency of the participants and facilitates a space where it is safe to surrender to the experience of one's own physicality. It is listening to the feeling, translating it into words and creating pauses between the words that give room for the experience. In somatic pedagogy, knowledge, understanding and insight can be found in everyone's own experience of the bodymind. Working is observational, questioning and intuitive, and the understanding that opens up through it is in constant process of formation. Somatic activity is related to relativity to others, the interweaving of inner and outer."​​​​

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Mammu Rankanen is Helsinki based dancer, choreographer, pedagogue and somatic movement therapist, and doctoral researcher at the Performing Arts Research Centre in Theatre Academy, University of Arts Helsinki. In her artistic practice she integrates contemporary dance, butoh, somatic movement and bodymind methods based on Asian wisdom traditions. Her firts encounter with butoh was in 1990, when many Japanese butoh artist visited Finland by performing and giving workshops. This had strong impacts to the Finnish contemporary dance and dance artists. Mammu has studied butoh in 90’s with Maureen Fleming, Anzu Furukawa, Masaki Iwana, Eiko and Koma, Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno and in 2024 -2025 with Seiji Tanaka, Yuri and Seisaku.

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https://www.mammurankanen.com