WADING

Loneliness has two faces : it can become the suffering of isolation , but also a space for contemplation and self-knowledge. In this episode of WADING, I introduce the philosophical problem of loneliness, moving from its growing relevance in contemporary society to a much older metaphysical question: what happens when the part believes itself separated from the Whole? From Anaximander to the exper...

In this episode of WADING , I explore how philosophical counselling can help us generate meaning around death , dying and loss . Philosophy has confronted these questions since its very beginning. From the pre-Socratics to Socrates , it has always asked what it means to appear, disappear, live and die. Philosophical counselling brings these questions into a helping relationship based on dialogue,...

In this episode of WADING , I explore a radical question: is death truly part of reality, or does it belong to the way reality appears to us? Through the allegory of Janus , the Sun and the Moon, I imagine two different ways of understanding existence. On one side are the Houses of Night, where birth and death appear as real and existence unfolds between beginning and end. On the other are the Hou...

What if death doesn’t mean becoming nothing? In this episode of  WADING , I explore the radical philosophy of Italian thinker Emanuele Severino and his claim that every being is eternal. If becoming means that something passes from being into nothingness, then becoming itself contains a contradiction. What disappears from our experience may not therefore be annihilated, but simply leave the horizo...

In this episode of WADING, I explore philosophy as meditatio mortis : an exercise in thinking about death in order to understand existence more deeply. Starting from the disturbing wisdom of Silenus — that it might have been better never to have been born — I move through Solon , Socrates , Epicurus , Prometheus , Heraclitus and Zen tradition to ask how human beings have tried to confront mortalit...

In this episode of WADING, I continue my journey through grief by asking a question that has accompanied human beings for centuries: what remedy do we seek when we’re confronted with death? Grief cannot simply be hidden or annihilated. But it can be listened to. And when we listen to it, it can reveal itself as another face of love: the trace of a presence that continues through memory, even when...

In this episode of WADING, I share my personal journey through grief after the death of my mother, and the path that led me to explore mourning through philosophy , death education , and butoh dance . How can we bear the pain of loss? What does death mean when it suddenly enters our lives? And can the body become a place where grief is not only endured, but listened to, transformed, and expressed?...

Spring of a Dancer  is a film, a book, a poem, a theatrical performance, a podcast, and a philosophical lecture on dance. Wondering  what is the point of dancing today  is one of the questions that has been close to my heart since I first became involved in dance. Butoh dance invites us to the scandal of the flesh, because it rebels against the rules and norms that claim to tell us what movement i...

"All things were born from a single fire" say the fragments of the Chaldean Oracles. In fact, without the splendour of the dance of the Sun , not only would there be no light for our planet, but the solar system could not even have formed. The Sun is at the centre of our experience of the rhythm of existence. It distinguishes day from night, brings the fruits of the earth to maturity, controls the...

Wondering what’s the point of dancing today is one of the questions that has been close to my heart since I started to get involved in dance. Just as butoh dance invites us to desecrate conventions and explore the areas that question the boundaries between masculine and feminine, life and death, grace and vulgarity; so philosophical thought invites us to question our beliefs, preparing us to enjoy...

The line between what is alive and what is dead is not so clear. Going through the pain of grief, I have learned that every ending is already a new beginning. None of us wants to grieve, certainly. Life can be difficult. Yet in the midst of the storm, we may surprise ourselves, turning our gaze beyond our skin frame. Like the fatigue of buds, during winter, we can let a new dance bloom when spring...

When we look death in the face we learn a little more about living . This is what grief has taught me, but not only that. Butoh dance has repeatedly allowed me to dance in the face of death. Indeed, as Hijikata Tatsumi says, the body of a butoh dancer is like a corpse desperately holding on. With our dance, which is life and death together, Ohno Kazuo teaches, we must be grateful for all those dea...

To achieve enlightenment , shamans teach, one must first bury oneself in the cave. In fact, they say, to open our gaze, we must close our eyes in the darkness of the earth. The shaman , like the butoh dancer , lives straddling the world of the living and the world of the dead, sometimes exchanging favor and sometimes hostility with spirits. Like alchemists , shamans challenge the boundaries betwee...

Dancing taught me that none of us live merely under our own skin . John Dewey, an American philosopher of the 20th century, said that our organs, in fact, are made to connect with what goes beyond our skin. This is why I teach dance. With my FÜYA method I invite my students to reflect on the meaning of dance and on the fact that dance actually allows us to experience our inner world, therefore dan...

WADING invites listeners to walk through the metaphorical river that separates worlds, much like the mythic crossings guided by Charon in ancient lore. This podcast is a journey into that very process of transcending what is immediately present. Through the expressive power of butoh dance — a performance art form that delves deep into the human spirit of ritual rebellion — and the philosophical in...