Isuini

Isuini Healing Martial Arts

Butoh Mutations and Baguazhang: Qi and the breath landscape

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Date/Time
Date(s) - October 21 2026
3:00 pm - 7:00 pm

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Butoh Mutations and Baguazhang: Qi and the breath landscape
21 October 2026 15:00 – 19:00 Berlin
Location: Upon Sign up
An opportunity to learn at the crossover of visceral performance practice, internal martial arts and energy practices, with two masters of their art and lineage holders in their own right.
Butoh Mutations is a project developed by artist and author Dominique Savitri Bonarjee. Mutating expands Butoh’s visceral inquiry to contemporary bodies. Savitri researches traditions of embodied knowledge, through which she transmits the teachings of her Japanese Butoh masters. In this portion of the workshop she will teach the ‘breath landscape’ from Daoist philosophy, a way of seeing/noticing polarities in the outer landscape as a technology for diving into the inner landscapes, towards dance improvisation and movement creation.
The Baguazhang portion of the workshop will teach the conjunction of structural alignment, Qi flow and breathing through the circle walk foundations. These include linear walk, change of direction and applications.  Partner drills will explore the intersections of grounding and redirecting an opponents power.
About the Instructors
Dominique Savitri Bonarjee is an artist and researcher of ritual and embodied knowledge traditions. She is the author of “Butoh, as Heard by a Dancer” (Routledge, 2024), an oral history account of her intensive research and transmissions of Butoh received from seminal first and second generation dancers while living in Japan. Continuing to seek upstream from Butoh, she completed an apprenticeship in internal martial arts with UK-based Integral Tai Chi to become an instructor, and 4th generation lineage holder in the Wudang Tai Chi lineage of Cheng Tin Hung. She is also a dancing dervish in the Sufi Mevlevi lineage of the Study Society for Nonduality. Her PhD in contemporary art entitled ‘Space of the Nameless’ (Goldsmiths University) developed an embodied research methodology for artistic research and collaborative process.

Yunuen Rhi M.A. is a fifth generation Ma Gui Baguazhang instructor, consultant, artist, body worker and writer. Their work bridges Bagua practice’s transformational principles, two bone setting methods, ceremonial medicine work, and performance art to support deep regenerative structural embodiment. As a fifth-generation Ma Gui Baguazhang instructor they have trained with Chinese masters since 2010 and have taught in Berlin and Los Angeles since 2014 and 2017 respectively. They do active research on the body as a source of regeneration and internal power through additional sustained training in Yang family Tai Chi, Philippino martial arts, Butoh, Balinese and Mexica dance. They are currently finishing an involved manuscript about their practice.

Baguazhang is one of the most profound internal martial art systems from China as it is trained in a circle to embody the I Ching symbol: the Ying Yang surrounded by eight trigrams. As a meditative and unifying whole body practice, it is also a potent self-defense system against stress, aging, and both emotional and physical illness. Through correct practice it is possible to reprogram the tissues to regulate blood and Qi (energy) flow, increase awareness and quality of movement.

Yunuen Rhi
Exchange:
150 €
120 € Early Sign up

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