Sculpting Presence: The Metamorphic Body
8-Week Butoh-Inspired Performance and Movement Training
The Metamorphic Body unfolds as an 8-week journey into presence explored through movement, sensation, and poetic expression.
This is not a training in form, but a practice of un-forming. An open space to dissolve, transform, and rediscover the body as a site of wonder, intelligence, and radical presence.
Guided by the principles of Butoh, the Metamorphic Body moves through four interwoven states that merge, overlap, and resculpt one another:
• Distillation – the state of condensation, exploring stillness, slowness and micro-gestures.
• Receptivity – the state of listening, attuning to subtle forces and allowing the body to be moved.
• Embodiment – the state of becoming, giving physical form to inner landscapes, shaping imagery into living flesh.
• Transformation – the state of transmutation, translating the poetic into presence, the unseen into the seen.
Through structured exercises and creative exploration, you will:
• Cultivate presence through stillness and subtle shifts in energy.
• Use evocative imagery to unlock unfamiliar, surprising movement.
• Expand your range from precise micro-gestures to full-bodied expression.
• Inhabit shifting landscapes of texture, energy, and shape.
• Navigate the space between each transformation with clarity and intention.
• Work with timing, space, and connection in solo and ensemble moments.
• Apply these tools in weekly, improvised compositions.
Grounded in a cross-disciplinary, psychosomatic approach, this work softens habitual patterns, awakens deep sensing, and allows an intuitive, expressive organism to emerge; radiant, grounded, and magnetic.
This is a practice of undoing and becoming. A space to soften, to risk, to be moved by the unknown, and to experience performance as presence rather than presentation.
Open to actors, dancers, performers, artists, and all those drawn to unlock transformative modes of movement, expression, and being.
No previous Butoh or performance experience required.
Dates & Time
Thursdays | 10:30 – 12:30
23 October – 18 December 2025 (8 weeks)
Location
Experimenta Art Co.
Konstantinoupoleos 138, Athens, Greece
Fees
€140 Early Bird (if booked by 30 September 2025)
€160 Standard Fee (after that date)
Payment
• Full prepayment required to secure your place
• Bank transfer details sent upon confirmation
Language
Class taught in English, with Greek support if needed
Registration
To register for The Metamorphic Body, please email:
YWRyYWtvcG91bG91IHwgeWFob28gISBjbyAhIHVr with the subject line: “Metamorphic Body”.
Places are limited and filled on a first-come, first-served basis. A waiting list will be kept in case of cancellations.
Biography:
Katerina Drakopoulou is an established performer, educator, and performance maker with a distinctive perspective on physical performance and embodied training. Her cross-disciplinary practice is shaped by a deep engagement with Butoh and a long-standing commitment to bridging actor-training, movement, performance art, and site-specific work.
She holds an MA in Ensemble Physical Theatre: Training and Performance (University of Huddersfield), an MA in Performance (Goldsmiths, University of London), and a BA in Drama and Theatre Studies (University of Kent), specializing in devising. She has taught at institutions including the University of Leeds and Manchester Metropolitan University, and currently teaches movement, physical theatre, and contemporary performance at the American College of Greece and at the Theater of Changes.
Her artistic practice and teaching are deeply informed by more than two decades of Butoh training. She has studied with acclaimed artists including Ko Murobushi, Kayo Mikami, Yukio Mikami, Min Tanaka, Atsushi Takenouchi, Minako Seki, Kan Katsura, Tetsuro Fukuhara, Frank van de Ven, Masaki Iwana, Yumiko Yoshioka, Moeno Wakamatsu, and Valentin Tszin, among others. She has collaborated as a performer with internationally renowned Butoh artists such as Tetsuro Fukuhara, Valentin Tszin, and the Torifune Butoh-Sha company. Since 2016, her primary artistic research has been the long-term project 22 stops, a site-specific, walk-based performance exploring the Butoh body in dialogue with urban and natural landscapes. First presented and awarded at the In-Progress Feedback Festival (Kinitiras, Athens, 2016), the work has since appeared in multiple versions at different festivals and will be presented at the Larnaca Biennale in October 2025.
She has performed across Europe, Japan, and the U.S.
Selected recent works include:
• AORISTOS | Past Perfect (dir. Anastasia Koumidou), Poe Festival, Rabbithole, Athens (2024).
• Ecotone, solo Butoh performance, Cheapart, Athens and the Bionic Festival, Madrid (2024).
• First Contact (Inside Spaceman performance group), Stockholm Fringe Festival (Best multi-media performance 2024), Kypseli Municipal Market (2024), and The Art Foundation, Athens (2024).
• Pandora 2022 (+2) – The Return, solo, long-durational, performance/installation, Performance Rooms, Kappatos Gallery, Athens (2024).
• In Anticipation, solo, long-durational Butoh performance, Flux Laboratory, Athens (2023).
• Antigone – A Hubris (dir. Vicky Mastrogianni, Omada 7), presented at the Buffer Fringe Performing Arts Festival, Nicosia (2023), the 10th International Balkan Countries Festival, Bursa (2023), and Psilikatzidiko, Athens (2022).
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