About Shen & Bones Performance Group

The dance-theater of Shen & Bones Performance Group is a passionate inquiry into our relationships with ourselves, others, Nature and the world. Central to this inquiry is a desire for performers and audience alike to journey through a visceral experience of their humanity in its many aspects. The work delves into the forces that constitute our physical and metaphysical universe for insights and meanings. This is a movement art that employs the physicality of the body as a primary vehicle of expressive communication; yet the concern is not so much with how the body moves as why the body moves. Namely, it is the stuff of life -- the feel of wet grass underfoot, the vivid remembrance of a childhood dream, a moment of infatuation -- that agitates us toward moving and thus transforms the body. In turn, Shen & Bones performers are trained to go beyond technical proficiency in order to communicate the genuine poetic essence of each movement and moment. The personal, creative voice of each performer is highly valued, and improvisation is an integral part of creating and performing the work.

Shen & Bones productions synthesize a variety of performance genres, drawing heavily from the philosophy and aesthetic of Butoh, a Japanese contemporary dance form, and from Western modern dance-theater styles. Butoh, in its multiple faces and forms, provides the inspirational “backbone” for Shen & Bones. As a versatile and highly organic medium, Butoh embraces contradictions and contrasting states within our internal and external worlds. It can be simultaneously simple and complex, disturbing and playful, raw and refined, defying expectations of a specific dance language. In any given performance, one might see a wide range of dynamics typical of Butoh, from movement so subtle it is practically invisible to wild and outlandish theatrics. Time is frequently suspended, as bodies roll aimlessly like heavy logs surrendering to the rhythm of ocean waves. Space becomes tangible, as the log-bodies burst suddenly like an exploding star, mouths, eyes, limbs and bellies expanding infinitely outward. Humor will often emerge, perhaps as a fool, adorned in business attire, with a tree-trunk headdress and an animal tail, lecturing pragmatically on the matter of anti-matter. A variety of modern dance movement vocabularies, often interwoven with the spoken word, serve to illuminate the concept of each work. Multi-layered images and sounds combine to penetrate through the rational mind directly to the workings of the subconscious. Audiences are encouraged to freely interpret the work and to derive any philosophical or allegorical meaning they wish.

Shen & Bones Performance Group performances may be enjoyed by many types of audiences in a variety of settings besides the conventional theater, including museums, restaurants, outdoor areas, educational and social venues, as well as other sites. The aim of Shen & Bones is to leave viewers with something to identify with, something to think further about, something moving for the heart, and something that speaks to their own creative imaginations.

Lani Fand Weissbach
Artistic Director