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PAUL MICHAEL HENRY

Hi. I make performances, music, and films. My artistic approach grows out of punk rock, experimental music and Butoh dance. Sometimes this ends up on a stage, and I also make albums, films and collaborate on other artists' projects. I'm artistic director of UNFIX (an international festival of ecological art) and teach dance workshops called The Dreaming Body. My themes are political, social & spiritual, dealing with love, neglect of the body, destruction of the environment and atrophy of the soul in consumerist society. I’m based in Glasgow, Scotland. Click around, and if you have any questions about the work I create, please get in touch by clicking here.

My last five dance pieces - click the menu>>>>>>>

WORKSHOPS

DANCE

ABOUT

FILM

CONTACT

UNFIX

MUSIC

¡Blunderbuss! by Cayto

PAUSE; Yet Life Goes On

Cayto

I generally make the music for my own dance shows, and sometimes I do it for other dancers. Here are two examples.

With Yuri Dini. We started out dancing and ended up making music for dancing.

Cayto were a strange punk rock band from Glasgow, Scotland, operative from about 1998-2005. They made some albums, toured a lot, and exploded.

These are some of the music projects I’m involved with:

Bird and Vessel

Your Atoms are Laughing by Cayto

Pollyanna Jesus

Black + Red by Pollyanna Jesus

A film about Kayo Mikami and Torifune Butoh-Sha, A Japanese Butoh troupe.

Debut album forthcoming. A solo endeavour.

Music for Ritual by UmTum

A response to COVID lockdowns by New York based artist Yokko.

Music for Dance

Um Tum

Pollyanna Jesus

SMITE ME NOW

40 minutes. An exploration of male suicide rates and the beyond. Created for Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival. 2019. Whole film available here. Music, choreography and concept - Paul Michael Henry Camera and editing: Shuta Shimmyo, PMH Shot in Japan, France and Scotland.

Caustic Wit - Kapil Seshasayee

Deadzone - Ladytron

Sometimes the silence is sweeter - The Ninth Wave

With Penny Chivas

Films I’ve made

My whole face sort of fell off

Music videos I’ve appeared in

A 30 minute meditation on Death in the Anthropocene. Commissioned by Art.Earth, 2021. Excerpt shown here. Music, choreography and concept - Paul Michael Henry Except ‘Mienai’ - Imakiku (PMH, Hiroko Komiya and Yuri Dini) Camera and editing - Filippo Romano Valtore, PMH

UNFIX Facebook

UNFIX is an evolving festival of performance and ecological activism I set up in 2015 as a response to several of the themes explored within my work and life. As artistic director of the festival I view my job as the pulling together art forms, ideas, political strands, intuitions, spiritualities and commitments from diverse communities who may not already be talking to each other, but whom I believe are working towards similar ways of being, resisting, and loving. So far it has had six iterations in Glasgow as well as multiple events in New York City, Tokyo and Bologna. UNFIX conceives individual human lives as a microcosm of the whole and takes climate change as the Trump Card fate is playing, a terrifyingly benevolent wake-up call that says WE CANNOT CONTINUE AS WE HAVE BEEN. We're being called to go beyond ourselves as individuals and a species, to realise a new place for ourselves within the web of all life (or else). UNFIX is my main contribution to this shift. You can find more details below:

UNFIX website

UNFIX Twitter

Workshop Description Butoh is an immersive dance form originating from Japan and dubbed the Dance of Darkness (Ankoku Butō). These workshops offer a method of embodied psychological practice, designed for people seeking to explore a creative way to express the memories, dreams, and possibilities hidden in their own body. It also offers a unique method of training for those interested in making performance and dance work. Dance as considered by Butoh artists is often very different from other dance forms: it is life dancing, dark and light, the subconscious emerging through the flesh. The training aims at acquiring body awareness through a set of exercises focused on coordination and disarticulation, dissolving of tension, balance, grounding and visualisation. This nurtures the flow of inner images, desires, conscious and unconscious memories and dreams, and our ability to perceive body energies. The goal is to unlock the imagination- body through surrendering to images, giving rise to the unique dance within each of us. These workshops are open to all with no prior experience necessary. I'm keen to welcome those of all body types, abilities and needs.

Butoh dance workshop

Testimonials from Participants • I have found Paul Henry through researching Butoh for a while. I first encountered the dance in Berlin and was fascinated by the scope for expression of normally taboo movements and expressions. I find the dance highly interesting and outspoken about "forbidden" topics that I like to concern myself with in my art practice. The workshop is highly stimulating and liberating, especially if one carries blockades and emotional baggage; at the same time it is structured in a way in which I can find artistic satisfaction for it is comprised intelligently, giving scope for individual stimulation and inspiration. I like how all levels are welcome and how the individuals in the room bounce off each other. Having done dance before, I can use stereotypical movements and shapes, questioning, developing and interpreting them anew. We are being taught new ways of thinking about our carnal and bodily experiences – clearly a sign of Paul’s competence in the field of leading a group systematically- but there is also room for already pre-existing experiences and ways of expression, which are not being classified or judged, but have the right to be implemented in performance and visual practice. The balance between learning something new and building upon prior knowledge is exactly right; there is no hierarchy and domination of master and apprentice, but everyone is treated as a person already capable of dance and movement.I very much enjoy the workshops that are being held at CCA by Paul for they show how humble and professional a teacher he is and to what extent he truly understands the principles of Butoh and artistic practice. One can use the monthly appointment to heal, to grow, to question, to paint, to let go or to think with the body instead of against it.- Darja Abdirova • Paul Michael Henry's workshops are an invitation to explore all the subtleties that exist within our psyche, body and our sense of humanity, through butoh. Facilitated with a true respect for the art form, humbleness and intuitive awareness of participants needs, I am grateful to have found such a skilled practitioner. I have been repeatedly returning, thrilled by the opportunity to journey through movement and reach new levels of authenticity, playfulness and healing which extend far beyond each session and can be carried back with me into my daily life. A deeply valuable movement system and skilled facilitator. I highly recommend connecting with these beautiful sessions!- Jennifer Kettles aka. Jaya Fire, Performance Artist • I trust Paul's voice. I strongly feel that I come back to his workshops because he holds a safe space for those willing to fully participate. He provides a space where one can fully participate, because that's what he knows. He can hold space for the powerful emotions that can rise up, because he knows them, and knows Butoh to be powerful as a practice. He lives what he teaches. I trust Paul's voice because, as a teacher, he is open and he is himself. He has the capacity to let participants own their experience, and can share his learning, his way without demanding that it is THE way.- Sarah Riseborough

Please click here to enquire about booking a workshop

THE DREAMING BODY

My Butoh Connection As of 2022 I have trained and performed with many of the most respected Butoh masters in Europe and Japan, including: including Yoshito Ohno, Yukio Waguri, Masaki Iwana, Kayo Mikami, Seisaku & Yuri, Tadashi Endo, Yumiko Yoshioka, Imre Thormann, Moe Yamamoto, Yuko Kaseki and Gyohei Zaitsu. My own Butoh dance work is platformed on multiple Butoh festivals around the world. These workshops are a synthesis of these experiences and my own research.

Contact

This show is available for touring (click here for booking enquiries).

[solo performance, 30 minutes]

The body doesn’t come with instructions It's the only way in or out  The body is the portal  Keep breathing Dance your father’s alcoholism  Dance your mother’s tears & shame  Dance fear and flowers, Becoming, suffering, pain and love You must dance there is no option  The body doesn’t come with instructions And here you are in it.

"After preparing us for his ritual performance with the poems of a magi, Michael laid bare his intent for the collective. In one miraculous moment, he scaled the wall effortlessly, vaulting himself up to a high loft to look at us incredulously. At once, he was beast, and he came down to the floor again as gracefully as a cat. A collective breath released. He finally embraced each and all, tenderly, an offering of authentic connection. We had touched something otherworldly.” - Sara Zalek, Butoh Chicago "A stunning performance..... raw, inquisitive and thought provoking." - UnShut Festival

Laughter at being crushed //

This show is available for touring (contact me above for booking enquiries).

Mammy //

Love for the dead bag //

Laughter at being crushed //

SHRIMP DANCE //

Landslide //

SHRIMP DANCE is a live performance for three artists fusing Butoh dance with live music, text and video art. It's a collaboration with marine biologist Professor Alex Ford (University of Portsmouth). Professor Ford found anti- depressants entering the sea through human waste are affecting the behaviour of shrimp. High levels of Prozac are causing shrimp to abandon their shadowy habitat and swim towards the light where they’re often eaten. THE HUMANS ARE SO SAD THAT THE SHRIMP ARE GOING CRAZY. SHRIMP DANCE broadens this research into a far-reaching comment on the medicalisation of profound sadness, linking our inner isolation to the havoc we’re wreaking in the world at large (waste, ecocide, consumer capitalism and extreme inequality). Produced with support from Creative Scotland, Dance Base, the Work Room and Platform Glasgow. The larger theme of the piece is what consumer capitalism is doing to our mental health and the health of the planet itself. However, SHRIMP DANCE aims to be ultimately hopeful: The very tablets we take to soothe our loneliness show us, through the most earthy means (sewage, animal life), our real power and belonging as ecological beings if we can only wake up to it.

Showing at Edinburgh Fringe 2022!

SHRIMP DANCE

“This performance is that often rare instance of a multi-disciplinary production that feels organically fused together with a unifying aesthetic... The body cannot lie, and Henry attacks the challenge of moving with uncompromising intention with rigour. Henry is accompanied by musician Jer Reid on droning electric guitar and live visuals from Jamie Wardrop. Projections move between organic and inorganic, between waterfalls and the tile-lined pool Henry is seen submerging himself in. A piece about depression, medication and our effect on the environment, it’s a loud yet nonetheless meditative piece of theatre.– The Skinny (􏰀􏰀􏰀􏰀). “A hypnotic hour of dance drama. The themes explored are huge: ecological crisis, mental health and consumerism, yet the moves are minute and precise – the sheer range, expressiveness and emotional impact of these are a testament to Henry’s considerable skill... Utterly compelling - the astonishingly talented Henry has much to say.” – Glasgow Theatre Blog “A weighty, at times disturbing, meditation on a deeply troubling phenomenon”- Disability Arts Online “The performance sees him moving like a somnambulist, eyes closed as thoughin a trance, body flailing as he tries to stay upright. He veers from sheer terror to anxiety to acceptance, almost akin to going through stages of grief... Paul Michael Henry’s new dance has the kind of quietude that unnerves and provokes in equal measure.”– Lorna Irvine (reviewer for the List and Exuent)

Click here to book tickets

5th-14th August at Dance Base

[with Jer Reid (music) & Jamie Wardrop (visuals), 50 minutes]

Landslide is inspired by sickness and the phenomenon of fever dreams - that hospital feeling of being unable to locate oneself in reality, shifting through different hallucinations of the body and mind – shimmering, colourful and fantastic, and all the while to an outside observer the patient is simply fragile and trembling in a hospital gown. When choreographing the piece I had the feeling of being a small girl in hospital for weeks, alternating between being barely able to move and suddenly acting out her fantasies of dance and transformation into characters and non-human beings. Thematically, Landslide centres on sickness and crumbling as a form of renewal. I had the idea that pared down to my skeleton, feverish and having all of my previous life stripped from me, my bones could listen to the memories of the Earth around me (embodied in the music) and find a new way to live. I do not know what this means, so I’ve tried to dance it.

Landslide

[solo performance, 20 minutes]

Mammy

Breastmilk & viscera sprayed all around.Mammy daddy help me remember I’m dancing.Pals we’ve forgotten our origins!(But I think I know where the nipple went).Crawl back with me.

[solo performance, 25 minutes]

Love for the dead bag

This piece born from physical helplessness or animal pain. Who looks after our bodies? There are fixed (dead) notions, and there are fluid (living) processes: The world in the body and the body in the world. What would love be like (of these bodies we don’t know but actually have)? Obsession we know already, but love? // Please be aware of your own meatball whilst considering mine You also are here.

[solo performance, 40 minutes]

Landslide //

Mammy //

Click here to book tickets

- Butoh workshop with Blanche Mulholland

- SHIMP DANCE at the Edinburgh Fringe 2022

Click here for show info

1st-3rd July 2022 at Hebden Bridge, England

NEWS

Click here for info (SOLD OUT)