Butoh
Butoh (舞踏 Butō) is a form of Japanese dance theatre that encompasses a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, performance, or movement. Following World War II, butoh arose in 1959 through collaborations between its two key founders Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo. The art form is known to "resist fixity" and be difficult to define; notably, founder Hijikata Tatsumi viewed the formalisation of butoh with "distress".Common features of the art form include playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, extreme or absurd environments, and it is traditionally performed in white body makeup with slow hyper-controlled motion. However, with time butoh groups are increasingly being formed around the world, with their various aesthetic ideals and intentions.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License.
RESOURCES
BOOKS
Alishina,J. (2015) "Butoh Dance Training - Secrets of Japanese Dance through the Alishina method" Jessica Kingsley Publishers, Paperback + Ebook
Fraleigh,S. & Nakamura,T. (2006) HIJIKATA TATSUMI AND OHNO KAZUO, Routledge , London & New York
WEBSITES
Waychoff, B. (2009) Butoh, Bodies, and Being Louisiana State University - Graduate study
New York Times - Butoh - Dance of Darkness
The JapanTimes - Butoh':The dance of death and disease
History of Butoh
Contemporary Dance - History with videos
New York Times - Butoh - Dance of Darkness
The JapanTimes - Butoh':The dance of death and disease
History of Butoh
Contemporary Dance - History with videos
Quotes from Fraleigh,S. & Nakamura,T. (2006) HIJIKATA TATSUMI AND OHNO KAZUO,
I simply received all things that moved me as they were, and I try to pass them to you. (Ohno Kazuo in Slater 1986: 7)
Spirit comes first when you dance. When you walk, do you think about your feet? There isn’t anyone who thinks about their feet. When a mother calls to her child, ‘Come here,’ the child responds, ‘Mother.’ Life is always like that. It doesn’t remain still. (Ohno 1997: 83)
The body in butoh is already the universe dancing on the borders of life and death. (Ohno Kazuo with Dopfer and Tangerding (in conversation) 1994: 55)
Most of the young people don’t come to dance. They come because they hear about butoh, or see a poster and think it looks different. They come searching for something different. The basic grounding and bonding of human energy used to be expressed through community festivals and other community events in which everyone participated. These events have changed focus so that a few perform while most watch. Seiryukai offers a space for a kind of community dance festival. (Harada Nobuo, Interview with Nakamura, July 6, 2001)
We shake hands with the dead, who send us encouragement from beyond our body; this is the unlimited power of BUTO. In our body history, something is hiding in our subconscious, collected in our unconscious body, which will appear in each detail of our expression. Here we can rediscover time with an elasticity, sent by the dead. We can find Buto, in the same way we can touch our hidden reality, something can be born, and can appear, living and dying in the moment. (Hijikata 1984):
I would like to make the dead gestures inside my body die one more time and make the dead themselves dead again. I would like to have a person who has already died die over and over inside my body. I may not know death, but it knows me. I often say that I have a sister living inside my body. When I am absorbed in creating a butoh work, she plucks the darkness from my body and eats more than is needed. When she stands up inside my body, I unthinkingly sit down. For me to fall is for her to fall. ... She is my teacher; a dead person is my butoh teacher. You’ve got to cherish the dead. Because we too, sooner or later, some day far or near, will be summoned, we must make extraordinary prepar- ations while alive not to be panicked when that time comes. Hijikata (2000d: 77)
Basically, “butoh” means to meander, or to move, as it were, in twists and turns between the realms of the living and the dead. The human hand has evolved in such a way that it is well able to talk. Its “speech” can finely articulate all that we feel. (Ohno and Ohno 2004: 205)
Spirit comes first when you dance. When you walk, do you think about your feet? There isn’t anyone who thinks about their feet. When a mother calls to her child, ‘Come here,’ the child responds, ‘Mother.’ Life is always like that. It doesn’t remain still. (Ohno 1997: 83)
The body in butoh is already the universe dancing on the borders of life and death. (Ohno Kazuo with Dopfer and Tangerding (in conversation) 1994: 55)
Most of the young people don’t come to dance. They come because they hear about butoh, or see a poster and think it looks different. They come searching for something different. The basic grounding and bonding of human energy used to be expressed through community festivals and other community events in which everyone participated. These events have changed focus so that a few perform while most watch. Seiryukai offers a space for a kind of community dance festival. (Harada Nobuo, Interview with Nakamura, July 6, 2001)
We shake hands with the dead, who send us encouragement from beyond our body; this is the unlimited power of BUTO. In our body history, something is hiding in our subconscious, collected in our unconscious body, which will appear in each detail of our expression. Here we can rediscover time with an elasticity, sent by the dead. We can find Buto, in the same way we can touch our hidden reality, something can be born, and can appear, living and dying in the moment. (Hijikata 1984):
I would like to make the dead gestures inside my body die one more time and make the dead themselves dead again. I would like to have a person who has already died die over and over inside my body. I may not know death, but it knows me. I often say that I have a sister living inside my body. When I am absorbed in creating a butoh work, she plucks the darkness from my body and eats more than is needed. When she stands up inside my body, I unthinkingly sit down. For me to fall is for her to fall. ... She is my teacher; a dead person is my butoh teacher. You’ve got to cherish the dead. Because we too, sooner or later, some day far or near, will be summoned, we must make extraordinary prepar- ations while alive not to be panicked when that time comes. Hijikata (2000d: 77)
Basically, “butoh” means to meander, or to move, as it were, in twists and turns between the realms of the living and the dead. The human hand has evolved in such a way that it is well able to talk. Its “speech” can finely articulate all that we feel. (Ohno and Ohno 2004: 205)
Dance experiences
This is a summary of the guiding concepts in the development and practice of butoh. The following pairs show aesthetic pro- pensities on the left with correlating themes on the right taken from Fraleigh,S. & Nakamura,T. (2006: 102)
1 Darkness – Spirit
2 Metamorphosis – Shapeshifting
3 Margins – Detritus
4 Ego Displacement – Moving Off-Kilter
5 Invisibility – Shedding
6 Non-doing – Patience
7 Total Theater – Eclectic Sources
