Butoh
Encyclopedia
is the collective name for a diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance
Dance
Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

, performance, or movement inspired by the movement. It typically involves playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, extreme or absurd environments, and is traditionally performed in white body makeup with slow hyper-controlled motion, with or without an audience. There is no set style, and it may be purely conceptual with no movement at all. Its origins have been attributed to Japanese dance legends Tatsumi Hijikata
Tatsumi Hijikata
was a Japanese choreographer, and the founder of a genre of dance performance art called Butoh. By the late 1960s, he had begun to develop this dance form, which is highly choreographed with stylized gestures drawn from his childhood memories of his northern Japan home...

 and Kazuo Ohno
Kazuo Ohno
was a Japanese dancer who became a guru and inspirational figure in the dance form known as Butoh. It was written of him that his very presence was an "artistic fact."...

.

History

Butoh appeared first in Japan following World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

 and specifically after student riot
Student riot
Student riots, college riots, or campus riots are riots precipitated by students, generally from a college, university, or other school.-Background:...

s. The roles of authority
Authority
The word Authority is derived mainly from the Latin word auctoritas, meaning invention, advice, opinion, influence, or command. In English, the word 'authority' can be used to mean power given by the state or by academic knowledge of an area .-Authority in Philosophy:In...

 were now subject to challenge and subversion. It also appeared as a reaction against the contemporary dance scene in Japan, which Hijikata felt was based on the one hand on imitating the West and on the other on imitating the Noh
Noh
, or - derived from the Sino-Japanese word for "skill" or "talent" - is a major form of classical Japanese musical drama that has been performed since the 14th century. Many characters are masked, with men playing male and female roles. Traditionally, a Noh "performance day" lasts all day and...

. He critiqued the current state of dance as overly superficial.

The first butoh piece, Kinjiki (Forbidden Colours) by Tatsumi Hijikata
Tatsumi Hijikata
was a Japanese choreographer, and the founder of a genre of dance performance art called Butoh. By the late 1960s, he had begun to develop this dance form, which is highly choreographed with stylized gestures drawn from his childhood memories of his northern Japan home...

, premiered at a dance festival in 1959. It was based on the novel of the same name by Yukio Mishima
Yukio Mishima
was the pen name of , a Japanese author, poet, playwright, actor and film director, also remembered for his ritual suicide by seppuku after a failed coup d'état...

. It explored the taboos of homosexuality and paedophilia and ended with a live chicken
Chicken
The chicken is a domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the Red Junglefowl. As one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, and with a population of more than 24 billion in 2003, there are more chickens in the world than any other species of bird...

 being held between the legs of Kazuo Ohno's son Yoshito Ohno, after which Hijikata chased Yoshito off the stage in darkness. Mainly as a result of the misconception that the chicken had died due to strangulation, this piece outraged the audience and resulted in the banning of Hijikata from the festival, establishing him as an iconoclast
Iconoclasm
Iconoclasm is the deliberate destruction of religious icons and other symbols or monuments, usually with religious or political motives. It is a frequent component of major political or religious changes...

.

The earliest butoh performances were called (in English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...

) "Dance Experience." In the early 1960s, Hijikata used the term "Ankoku-Buyou" (暗黒舞踊 – dance of darkness) to describe his dance. He later changed the word "buyo," filled with associations of Japanese classical dance, to "butoh," a long-discarded word for dance that originally meant European ballroom dancing.

In later work, Hijikata continued to subvert conventional notions of dance. Inspired by writers such as Yukio Mishima (as noted above), Lautréamont, Artaud, Genet
Genet
-Aircraft:*Armstrong Siddeley Genet, aircraft engine*Armstrong Siddeley Genet Major, aircraft engine-Animals and Plants:*Genet , a colony of plants, fungi or bacteria that come from a single genetic source....

 and de Sade, he delved into grotesquerie, darkness, and decay. At the same time, Hijikata explored the transmutation of the human body into other forms, such as those of animals. He also developed a poetic and surreal choreographic language, butoh-fu (舞踏譜) (fu means "notation" in Japanese), to help the dancer transform into other states of being.

The work developed beginning in 1960 by Kazuo Ohno
Kazuo Ohno
was a Japanese dancer who became a guru and inspirational figure in the dance form known as Butoh. It was written of him that his very presence was an "artistic fact."...

 with Tatsumi Hijikata was the beginning of what now is regarded as "butoh." In Jean Viala's and Nourit Masson-Sekinea's book Shades of Darkness, Ohno is regarded as "the soul of butoh," while Hijikata is seen as "the architect of butoh." Hijikata and Ohno later developed their own styles of teaching. Students of each style went on to create different groups such as Sankai Juku
Sankai Juku
is an internationally known butoh dance troupe. Co-founded by Amagatsu Ushio in 1975, they are touring worldwide, performing and teaching. As of 2010, Sankai Juku had performed in 43 countries and visited more than 700 cities.- Amagatsu Ushio:...

, a Japanese dance troupe well-known to fans in North America.

Students of these two great artists have been known to highlight the differing orientations of their masters. While Hijikata was a fearsome technician of the nervous system influencing input strategies and artists working in groups, Ohno is thought of as a more natural, individual, and nurturing figure who influenced solo artists.

Debate

There is much discussion about who should receive the credit for creating butoh. As artists worked to create new art in all disciplines after World War II, Japanese artists and thinkers emerged out of economic and social challenges that produced an energy and renewal of artists, dancers, painters, musicians, writers, and all other artists.

A number of people with few formal connections to Hijikata began to call their own idiosyncratic dance "butoh." Among these are Iwana Masaki (岩名雅紀), Tanaka Min (田中民), and Teru Goi. Although all manner of systematic thinking about butoh dance can be found, perhaps Iwana Masaki most accurately sums up the variety of butoh styles:


While 'Ankoku Butoh' can be said to have possessed a very precise method and philosophy (perhaps it could be called 'inherited butoh'), I regard present day butoh as a 'tendency' that depends not only on Hijikata's philosophical legacy but also on the development of new and diverse modes of expression.

The 'tendency' that I speak of involved extricating the pure life which is dormant in our bodies.


Hijikata is often quoted saying what opposition he had to a codified dance: "Since I believe neither in a dance teaching method nor in controlling movement, I do not teach in this manner." However, in the pursuit and development of his own work, it is only natural that a "Hijikata" style of working and, therefore, a "method" emerged. Both Mikami Kayo and Maro Akaji have stated that Hijikata exhorted his disciples to not imitate his own dance when they left to create their own butoh dance groups. If this is the case, then his words make sense: There are as many types of butoh as there are butoh choreographers.

Starting in the early 1980s, butoh experienced a renaissance as butoh groups began performing outside Japan for the first time. The most famous of these groups is Sankai Juku. During one performance by Sankai Juku, in which the performers hung upside down from ropes from a tall building in Seattle, Washington
Seattle, Washington
Seattle is the county seat of King County, Washington. With 608,660 residents as of the 2010 Census, Seattle is the largest city in the Northwestern United States. The Seattle metropolitan area of about 3.4 million inhabitants is the 15th largest metropolitan area in the country...

, one of the ropes broke, resulting in the death of a performer. The footage was played on national news, and butoh became more widely known in America through the tragedy. A PBS documentary of a butoh performance in a cave with no audience further broadened knowledge in America.

In the early 1990s, Koichi Tamano performed atop the giant drum of San Francisco Taiko Dojo inside Grace Cathedral, in an international religious celebration.

Butoh's status at present is ambiguous. Accepted as a performance art
Performance art
In art, performance art is a performance presented to an audience, traditionally interdisciplinary. Performance may be either scripted or unscripted, random or carefully orchestrated; spontaneous or otherwise carefully planned with or without audience participation. The performance can be live or...

 overseas, it remains fairly unknown in Japan.

Butoh in popular culture

A Butoh performance choreographed by Yoshito Ohno appears at the beginning of the Tokyo section of Hal Hartley
Hal Hartley
Hal Hartley is an American film director, screenwriter, producer composer, who became a key figure in the American independent film movement of the 1980s and 1990s...

's 1995 film Flirt.

Ron Fricke
Ron Fricke
Ron Fricke is an American film director and cinematographer, considered to be a master of time-lapse photography and large format cinematography. He was the director of photography for Koyaanisqatsi and directed the purely cinematic non-verbal non-narrative feature Baraka . He designed and used...

's experimental documentary film Baraka
Baraka (film)
Baraka is a 1992 non-narrative film directed by Ron Fricke. The title Baraka is a word that means blessing in a multitude of languages....

(1992) features scenes of butoh performance.

In the late 1960s, exploitation film
Exploitation film
Exploitation film is a type of film that is promoted by "exploiting" often lurid subject matter. The term "exploitation" is common in film marketing, used for all types of films to mean promotion or advertising. These films then need something to exploit, such as a big star, special effects, sex,...

 director Teruo Ishii
Teruo Ishii
was a Japanese film director best known in the West for his early films in the Super Giant series, and for his films in the Ero guro subgenre of pinku eiga such as Shogun's Joys of Torture . He also directed the 1965 film, Abashiri Prison, which helped to make Ken Takakura a major star in Japan...

 hired Hijikata to play the role of a Doctor Moreau-like reclusive mad scientist
Mad scientist
A mad scientist is a stock character of popular fiction, specifically science fiction. The mad scientist may be villainous or antagonistic, benign or neutral, and whether insane, eccentric, or simply bumbling, mad scientists often work with fictional technology in order to forward their schemes, if...

 in his film horror movie Horrors of Malformed Men
Horrors of Malformed Men
is a 1969 Japanese film in the Ero guro sub-genre of Toei's style of Pink film. Directed by Teruo Ishii, the film is considered a precursor to Toei's ventures into the "Pinky violent" style in the early 1970s.-Critical appraisal:...

.
The role was mostly performed as dance. The film has remained largely unseen in Japan for forty years because it was viewed as insensitive to the handicapped.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa
Kiyoshi Kurosawa
is a Japanese filmmaker. He is best known for his many contributions to the Japanese horror genre.-Biography:Born in Kobe on July 19, 1955, Kiyoshi Kurosawa is not related to director Akira Kurosawa...

 used butoh movement for actors in his 2001 film Kairo
Kairo (film)
is a 2001 Japanese horror film directed by Kiyoshi Kurosawa. The film was based on his novel of the same name, and was released in the United States in 2005 as Pulse. The film was screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2001 Cannes Film Festival...

, remade in Hollywood in 2006 as Pulse. The re-make did not feature butoh.

Butoh performance features heavily in Doris Dörrie
Doris Dörrie
Doris Dörrie is a German film director, producer and author.-Life and work:Dörrie completed her secondary education at a humanist Gymnasium. In 1973 she began a two-year attendance in film studies, in the drama department of the University of the Pacific in Stockton, California. She then studied...

's 2008 film Cherry Blossoms
Cherry Blossoms (film)
Cherry Blossoms is a 2008 German film directed by Doris Dörrie.-Plot:The story culminates in a pilgrimage to Mount Fuji in the midst of the cherry blossom season, a celebration of beauty, impermanence, and new beginnings....

, in which a Bavarian widower embarks on a journey to Japan to grieve for his late wife and develop an understanding of this performance style for which she had held a life-long fascination.

A portrait of Kazuo Ohno
Kazuo Ohno
was a Japanese dancer who became a guru and inspirational figure in the dance form known as Butoh. It was written of him that his very presence was an "artistic fact."...

 appears on the cover of the 2009 Antony & the Johnsons  album The Crying Light
The Crying Light
The Crying Light is Antony and the Johnsons' third studio album and the follow-up to the band's widely-acclaimed second LP, I Am a Bird Now...

.

Butoh has greatly influenced the Sopor Aeternus and the Ensemble of Shadows
Sopor Aeternus and the Ensemble of Shadows
Sopor Aeternus & the Ensemble of Shadows is a darkwave musical project based in Frankfurt, founded in 1989 by Anna-Varney Cantodea...

, the musical project of Anna-Varney Cantodea. Its visual motifs are used in for the project's publicity photos and videos.

Aepril Schaile's work as a bellydance perfomance artist has elements of Butoh in its movements and visual motifs.

Initial butoh dancers

Hijikata's female principal dancer was Yoko Ashikawa. Ashikawa lives in Japan. She no longer makes public performances.

Yukio Waguri was a young student in the last company of Tatsumi Hijikata. Waguri still lives in Japan, teaches, and performs all over the world.

Another principal dancer for Hijikata was Koichi Tamano. Tamano made his United States debut in 1976 at the “Japan Now” exhibition at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
San Francisco Museum of Modern Art
The San Francisco Museum of Modern Art is a modern art museum located in San Francisco, California. A nonprofit organization, SFMOMA holds an internationally recognized collection of modern and contemporary art and was the first museum on the West Coast devoted solely to 20th century art...

. Hijikata
Hijikata
is a Japanese surname, and may refer to:* Tatsumi Hijikata, choreographer* Hijikata Toshizō, deputy leader of the Shinsengumi...

 called Tamano "the bow-legged Nijinsky
Nijinsky
Nijinsky can refer to:*Vaslav Nijinsky , ballet dancer and choreographer*Bronislava Nijinska , dancer, choreographer and teacher*Nijinksy , starring Alan Bates Harry Saltzman as Vaslav Nijinsky*Nijinsky II, race horse...

," a quote later rendered in English by Allen Ginsberg
Allen Ginsberg
Irwin Allen Ginsberg was an American poet and one of the leading figures of the Beat Generation in the 1950s. He vigorously opposed militarism, materialism and sexual repression...

.

Ko Murobushi was responsible for bringing butoh to Europe in the 1970s. He and Akaji Maro started the company Dairakudakan in Tokyo.

Butoh exercises

Most butoh exercises use image work to varying degrees: from the razorblades and insects of Ankoku Butoh, to Dairakudakan's threads and water jets, to Seiryukai's rod in the body. There is a general trend toward the body as "being moved," from an internal or external source, rather than consciously moving a body part. A certain element of "control vs. uncontrol" is present through many of the exercises.

Looked at from completely scientific standpoint, this is rarely possible unless under great duress or pain but, as Kurihara points out, pain, starvation, and sleep deprivation were all part of life under Hijikata's method, which may have helped the dancers access a movement space where the movement cues had terrific power. It is also worth noting that Hijikata's movement cues are, in general, much more visceral and complicated than anything else since.

Most exercises from Japan (with the exception of much of Ohno Kazuo's work) have specific body shapes or general postures assigned to them, while almost none of the exercises from Western butoh dancers have specific shapes. This seems to point to a general trend in the West that butoh is not seen as specific movement cues with shapes assigned to them such as Ankoku Butoh or Dairakudakan's technique work, but rather that butoh is a certain state of mind or feeling that influences the body directly or indirectly.

Hijikata did in fact stress feeling through form in his dance, saying, "Life catches up with form," which in no way suggests that his dance was mere form. Ohno, though, comes from the other direction: "Form comes of itself, only insofar as there is a spiritual content to begin with."

The trend toward form is apparent in several Japanese dance groups, who merely recycle Hijikata's shapes and present butoh that is mere body-shapes and choreography which would lead butoh closer to contemporary dance or performance art than anything else. A good example of this is Torifune Butoh-sha's recent works.

A paragraph from butoh dancer Iwana Masaki, whose work shies away from all elements of choreography.

I have never heard of a butoh dancer entering a competition. Every butoh performance itself is an ultimate expression; there are not and cannot be second or third places. If butoh dancers were content with less than the ultimate, they would not be actually dancing butoh, for real butoh, like real life itself, cannot be given rankings.

Defining butoh

Critic Mark Holborn has written that butoh is defined by its very evasion of definition. The Kyoto Journal variably categorizes butoh as dance, theater, “kitchen,” or “seditious act.” The San Francisco Examiner describes butoh as "unclassifiable". The SF Weekly article "The Bizarre World of Butoh" was about former sushi restaurant Country Station, in which Koichi Tamano was “chef” and Hiroko Tamano "manager". The article begins, “There’s a dirty corner of Mission Street, where a sushi restaurant called Country Station shares space with hoodlums and homeless drunks, a restaurant so camouflaged by dark and filth it easily escapes notice. But when the restaurant is full and bustling, there is a kind of theater that happens inside…” Butoh frequently occurs in areas of extremes of the human condition, such as skid rows, or extreme physical environments, such as a cave with no audience, remote Japanese cemetery, or hanging by ropes from a skyscraper in front of the Washington Monument.

Hiroko Tamano considers modeling for artists to be butoh, in which she poses in "impossible" positions held for hours, which she calls "really slow Butoh". The Tamano’s home seconds as a “dance” studio, with any room or portion of yard potentially used. When a completely new student arrived for a workshop in 1989 and found a chaotic simultaneous photo shoot, dress rehearsal for a performance at Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, workshop, costume making session, lunch, chat, and newspaper interview, all "choreographed" into one event by Tamano, she ordered the student, in broken English, “Do interview.” The new student was interviewed, without informing the reporter that the student had no knowledge what butoh was. The improvised information was published, “defining” butoh for the area public. Tamano then informed the student that the interview itself was butoh, and that was the lesson. Such "seditious acts," or pranks in the context of chaos, are butoh.

Influence

Teachers influenced by more Hijikata style approaches tend to use highly elaborate visualizations that can be highly mimetic, theatrical and expressive. A good example of this teaching would be Koichi and Hiroko Tamano, founders of Harupin-Ha Butoh Dance Company (who own and operate the Tamasei Sushi restaurant in San Francisco).

Teachers who have spent time with Ohno seem to be much more eclectic and individual in approach, bearing the mark of their master, perhaps, in tendencies to indulge in wistful states of spiritualized semi-embodiment.

There have been many unique groups and performance companies influenced by the movements created by Hijikata and Ohno, ranging from the highly minimalist of Sankai Juku
Sankai Juku
is an internationally known butoh dance troupe. Co-founded by Amagatsu Ushio in 1975, they are touring worldwide, performing and teaching. As of 2010, Sankai Juku had performed in 43 countries and visited more than 700 cities.- Amagatsu Ushio:...

 to very theatrically explosive and carnivalesque performance of groups like Dairakudakan.

International

Many Nikkei (or members of the Japanese diaspora), such as Japanese Canadians Jay Hirabayashi of Kokoro Dance
Kokoro Dance
Kokoro Dance is one of Canada's leading butoh dance troupes. Based in Vancouver, British Columbia, it was founded in 1986 by artistic directors Barbara Bourget and Japanese Canadian Jay Hirabayashi. They have performed across Canada, in the United States, and abroad.As is characteristic of butoh...

, Denise Fujiwara, incorporate butoh in their dance or have launched butoh dance troupes.

Butoh is also created and performed by non-Japanese Canadians – Thomas Anfield and Kevin Bergsma formed BUTOH-a-GO-GO in 1999 billing it a "Second Generation Butoh/Performance Company." Anfield and Bergsma met in 1995 working with Kokoro Dance.

The multimedia, physical theater-oriented group called Ink Boat in San Francisco incorporates humor into their work. Another San Francisco performance troupe, COLLAPSINGsilence was formed in 1992 by Terrance Graven
Terrance Graven
Terrance Graven is a San Francisco artist whose installations often incorporate sculptural elements, live performances, costumes, sound pieces, and theatrical lighting. He studied at Indiana University and holds a Bachelor of Arts degree from San Francisco State University...

, Indra Lowenstein, and Monique Motil. The group was active for 13 years and participated in The International Performance Art Festival in 1996. They often collaborated with live musicians such as Sharkbait, Hollow Earth, Haunted by Waters, and Mandible Chatter. The Swedish SU-EN Butoh Company tours Europe extensively. Another prominent butoh-influenced performers is the American dancer Maureen Fleming
Maureen Fleming
Maureen Fleming is an American dancer, performance artist, and choreographer from New York City. She studied butoh dance and is known for her meditative, dreamlike solo dances, which include elements of contortion, and in which she often performs unclothed...

.

More notable European practitioners, who have worked with butoh and avoided the stereotyped 'butoh' languages which some European practitioners tend to adopt, take their work out of the sometimes closed world of 'touring butoh' and into the international dance and theatre scenes include Marie-Gabrielle Rotie, Kitt Johnson (Denmark) and Katharina Vogel (Switzerland). Such practitioners in Europe aim to go back to the original aims of Hijikata and Ohno and go beyond the tendency to imitate a ' master' and instead search within their own bodies and histories for 'the body that has not been robbed' (Hijikata).

Eseohe Arhebamen
Eseohe Arhebamen
Eseohe Arhebamen also known as Edoheart is a poet, dancer, singer, performance artist and visual artist. Eseohe was born in Zaria, Nigeria on April 9, 1981 and is descended from a royal family of the Benin Empire...

 is the first African butoh performer and practices a style she calls "Butoh-vocal theatre".

Notable butoh artists

  • Akaji Maro
    Akaji Maro
    is a Japanese actor, Butoka, and theater director. He was born in Sakurai, Nara and is the founder of Dairakudakan. His son is Nao Ōmori.-Film:*Yakuza Weapon *Sakigake!! Otokojuku *Makai Tensho *Kill Bill Vol...

  • Ushio Amagatsu
    Amagatsu Ushio
    is a Japanese choreographer known as the leader of the internationally celebrated and innovative Butoh dance group Sankai Juku, which he founded in 1975. He is the artistic director, choreographer and a dancer of Sankai juku. He was also a co-founder of the seminal Butoh collective Dairakakudakan...

  • Kazuo Ohno
    Kazuo Ohno
    was a Japanese dancer who became a guru and inspirational figure in the dance form known as Butoh. It was written of him that his very presence was an "artistic fact."...

  • Min Tanaka
    Min Tanaka
    is a Japanese actor and dancer. He won the award for best supporting actor at the 26th Japan Academy Prize for The Twilight Samurai.-Filmography:* The Twilight Samurai * The Hidden Blade * House of Himiko...

  • Edoheart
  • Tadashi Endo
    Tadashi Endo
    Tadashi Endo is a butoh dancer resident in Göttingen, Germany. Endo is a Japanese national. He studied theatre direction in Vienna before touring Europe giving solo performances accompanied by leading jazz performers. In 1980, he was hired as head of a theater program for the city of Northeim,...

  • Akira Kasai
  • Jerry Gardner


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
x
OK