She used to be funny now she’s just weird.

Momo D’Mare is a character that was created as a response to a series of butoh workshops and one on one sessions with butoh artist and mentor Yumi Uminare.

These sessions focused on devising performance using butoh as a form of narrative creation and character development.

Momo watches the children move, she is fascinated by their bodies, noticing the similarities to her own and the differences. Tracing their movement with her finger first and then with her own body she explores the shapes, becoming the positive and observing the negative space around her, this is the space that holds her in place.

Momo embodies the spirit of the children, she is immersed in their being, she is the room that holds them, the air they breathe and the bodies they inhabit. Momo loses herself to them, and finds herself in them, she describing the process and the sensations with her face and her body.

Influenced by my past theatre experience and interest in the history of and archetypes of the clown, is where Momo emerged. Her struggles around rejection and hopes gone wrong have left her questioning and in her sadness she has turned to madness. This performance looked at the balance sought when a human is divided again and gain, by people, by conflicting ideas, by aversions and desire. Momos disturbances are channeled, she is forever in the process of rewilding, its a long way back.

This past year of studying and developing the butoh body, I have come to find places of my physical and emotional condition that are emergent with possibility. The butoh body is open, is ready, sensitive and receptive, it is seeking a possible body. If I can allow old habits and ways of being to peel away I am left in a neutral state, clear and ready to receive.

Explorations of the possible body began using Momo as a vessel, an access point for me to connect with a sense of the other.

A self portrait as Momo was included on the cover of JoCAT (journal of creative arts therapies) August edition, 2021.