Workshop Reflection: “Between Worlds – Lucid Awareness through Butoh”

From October 24–26, 2025, I had the joy of guiding a 2½-day Butoh workshop in Vienna, organized by the cultural association Kunstgeberei in collaboration with Bunte Begegnungen.

Within a small circle of five participants, a space of trust, sensitivity and transformation unfolded. Each movement became a moment of listening — inward, outward and into the invisible. I received so much love and heartfelt feedback and the practice itself turned into a quiet celebration of presence and connection.

What is Butoh?

The body already knows. Breath is simple.

The intelligence of the body is organic and structural.

Through dialogue with our senses, we are invited to reconnect — to emerge from the deep places within our bodies where memories live.

Butoh is the dance of one’s own path — of each person, each being, each life.

Every body is different; every body carries its own story. We are interested in this unique, personal beauty that belongs to everyone — to let it grow, to give it rhythm, to reveal its artistic dimension.

This is Butoh: universal, precisely because it is different for every being.

Inside the Workshop

Throughout the workshop, we worked with somatic meditations and mindfulness practices, exploring what it means to be moved by something rather than moving ourselves. We investigated how information and memory live within the body, how inner images transform and how the great themes of life and death — inseparable in Butoh — reveal themselves as an ongoing cycle of transformation.

Each participant concluded the weekend by sharing a short movement sequence with the group under the title “Self Presentation.”

It was a deeply touching closing — a witnessing of how the inner worlds had found form through the body.

🎬 Here is a beautiful example:

Artist: Bea Forizs

Research: Object exploration from the Butoh state

🙏 Shared with kind permission.

Participant Reflections

“It was so beautiful and inspiring to work with these inner images! I’ll carry this experience into my painting.”

“As an artist, Butoh is a wonderful source of research and inspiration. Thank you for sharing these precious techniques.”

“It’s incredible how much body awareness you’ve cultivated through Butoh — it motivates me to keep exploring and training.”

I feel deeply grateful for this weekend — for the shared exploration, the silent discoveries and the tender dance between worlds.

🕊️ Thank you to all who participated and to Kunstgeberei and Bunte Begegnungen for making this encounter possible.

After the workshop, I also received some deeply moving written reflections from participants who took time to share their experiences in words.

I’m touched by the depth, honesty, and sensitivity in what they wrote — each voice offering a unique glimpse into how Butoh resonates through body, emotion, and life.

Here are two of these reflections, shared with gratitude and permission:

As a dancer and somatic life & business coach, it was deeply healing to reconnect with my body and emotions through Butoh, guided by Miriam.

The greatest gift of this workshop was learning to relate to my body and its stored emotions in a completely new way.

I realized how often I hide behind my dance — and how Butoh allowed me to meet my shadow aspects with playfulness and curiosity. It was more liberating than I could have imagined.

The space for sharing and integrating our experiences felt grounding and real. I appreciated that we didn’t analyze or interpret too much — it helped me stay connected to my somatic experience.

Since the workshop, I notice real changes: in my creative practice, my movements feel richer, freer, and less habitual; and in life, I find myself braver, more open, and less driven by perfectionism or people-pleasing.

I feel less ashamed, more curious, and more ready to say “yes” — both in dance and in life. BEA

The Butoh workshop with Miriam Strasser opened a door to a new emotional world within me.

Working with a “mask” — holding an emotion such as grief or weakness and allowing it to slowly spread through the body — was deeply moving and very helpful. It allowed me to feel emotions I usually don’t permit myself to experience in daily life, and to sense them fully and authentically in my body.

I will definitely use this technique again in my life.

The performative nature of the workshop made it easier to open up and explore new aspects of myself, which I find very supportive for real life, too.

Beforehand, I couldn’t really imagine what to expect — and even now it’s hard to put into words. But I’d say this workshop invites you on a journey of self-exploration, into your hidden emotional world, and into deep embodied feeling.

Thank you, Miriam, for this experience and your work. ISA