Living Tissue: Teaching and Learning Butoh in the 21st Century
"The dancer shall not dance—but should be danced."
—Tadashi Endo
The word “butoh” means “dance step” in Japanese and “Butoh,” or “Ankoku Butoh” as it was called by founder Tatsumi Hijikata, refers to the “dance of utter darkness” he developed starting in 1959. A revolutionary response to the psychic chaos that permeated post-WWII Japan and its rapid modernization, Butoh is at once contemporary and timeless, a movement form that draws from both Japanese and Western sources to propose the human body not as fact but as a process of transformation. The early practitioners of this dance-theatre, most notably Hijikata and his senior, Kazuo Ohno, sought to reclaim and unearth a body stolen by the forces of Westernization, Modernization, the bombings at Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the fast pace of global capitalism. Announced to the West with Kazuo Ohno’s visit to New York’s La Mama in 1981, and now visible in numerous festivals that present avant-garde programming—such as Brooklyn Academy of Music’s Next Wave Festival in New York—and in the works of contemporary choreographers such as Compagnie Jant-Bi and Shen Wei—who cite it as an influence in recent works, Butoh is visible now more than ever. In the 21st century it has moved from underground to walk the earth.
Less apparent is how Western dance students and audiences understand this form: Is it a fundamentally Japanese dance or an export that plays off Western exotic fascination? A rejection of traditional Japanese practices like Noh and Kabuki or a reconsideration of them combined with aspects from German Ausdruckstanz to create a hybrid? A style and aesthetic—often characterized by white body paint, bare skin, slow movement, and grotesque shapes—or a deeply internal movement style based on improvisations free from formal, technical constraints? And when presented on the stage, do audiences experience improvisation, choreography, or ritual—and is its rightful place even on the stage or, as Mark Holborn states in his film "Butoh: Dance of Darkness" (1989), an underground form that once presented for consumption ceases to be Butoh? One thing is certain: Butoh thrives on paradox. To study it is to explore what it does rather than what it is. Butoh’s slippery nature goes back to its charismatic and untamed father, Hijikata, who frequently invented and changed the facts of his own life to present a sort of mythic history. He drew others to him, initially men, who lived communally under rustic conditions and worked as nightclub dancers to earn money. Often sleep-deprived and coping with various imposed discomforts, such as clay applied to the skin that dried and itched, these performers were put in heightened states of awareness so as to be fully present to the immediate moment. This, Hijikata taught, allowed them to access extremely powerful physical and mental situations. The postures he developed also put the body on the edge of crisis—revealing the beautiful and grotesque struggle of life, and death. He is said to have looked to the hunched comportment of peasants whose bodies were formed by years of toiling in the fields, and the notion of hard work, as a way to both shape the body and subvert mental logic continues to be central in much Butoh training. It is a way of life, not a studio technique.
Notions of birth, death, and haunting run throughout Butoh—like history, it accompanies us. Later in his life, Hijikata claimed that the ghost of his dead sister was living inside his body. While by some accounts this sister had not actually died but instead moved from their poor rural village to a large modern metropolis, her presence motivated his dancing—he danced with her. Similarly, Kazuo Ohno in his ongoing piece "Admiring La Argentina" embodies the Flamenco dancer Antonia Merce (known as "La Argentina"), who he saw perform only once. Deeply moved by the experience, Ohno dances her “spirit,” deepening this manifestation as his own body decays (Ohno will turn 102 this fall). As the body ages, it goes through a process of transformation, giving birth to other qualities.
Yumiko Yoshioka in N.YOiN choreographed by Yumiko Yoshioka and Kim Johnson, Berlin, 1999.
Photo by Klause Rabie
Butoh also works to unearth lost of forgotten memories stored deep in the body, bringing them out into the open. The recognition of a pre-modern state was perhaps initially a counter to Japan’s rapid Western-oriented modernization, but it still serves the important purpose of allowing students and viewers to cast off surface level distractions and access a deeper core. As artist/teacher Yumiko Yoshioka puts it, “We neutralize and cleanse ourselves, coming closer to our no-name body. We can forget our private, or personal, body. It is like: delete and reset, or get a blank canvas for a new painting. This is an important process so we can focus on our universal-body—which is beyond our ego—so we can reach the deeper layers of ourselves.” Much of Butoh’s visual aesthetic—the white paint, rag-like clothing, bare flesh, contorted forms, and far-away gaze—serves to erase the “self” so that the body becomes a vessel for numerous and often contradictory elements. Nature plays prominently as a motivation for movement—for example the opening of a flower, or wind and water currents, may act as starting points. Other aspects include morphing between states such as insects, animals, and human emotions. As a practice, Butoh works with the imagination and makes it real, harnessing the focus of both mind and body toward an alternate existence.
Over the 50 years of its development, teachers have drawn on these fundamental Butoh principles to develop their own philosophies, often providing guiding phrases and concepts to be pondered and worked with by students. For example Tadashi Endo, whose background also includes No theatre, Kabuki, and traditional forms of Occidental theatre, has developed what he calls “Butoh MA.” MA, a term from ZEN-Buddhism, means "emptiness" and refers to the "space between the things," which for Endo is “the way to make the unvisible visible.” By accessing MA—the space before movement, or just at its end—we enter a void beyond time and words. He writes, “To succeed in this research you need emptiness so that new ideas and new imaginations with new patterns of movements can grow in your mind and in your body.” By training we can create this space, and in this void, new seeds can grow.
For Yoshioka, co-founder of TEN PEN CHii art labor, Butoh is “a dance of metamorphosis.” She notes that, “Through intensive physical and mental approaches, we awaken our potential energy—forgotten memories within us before our birth. We let them transform and dance with them. Afterwards, we notice that we are not dancing but being danced by them.” Her approach, called “Body Resonance,” draws from yoga, tai chi, qi gong, and Noguchi gymnastics to relax the body and release toxins that block energy flow and body/mind connection. One principle Yoshioka works with is the body as a “water sack” that fills, empties, and flows, and her teaching often involves moving closely with others. Once the body is relaxed, she then makes image-based suggestions that can resonate in the unconscious, producing unexpected responses and sensations out of which we can create an outer expression: dance. The movement is from inside to out. Shinichi Iova-Koga’s workshop, “Disciplines for the Hidden Body: Form, Imagery and Improvisation,” focuses on the notion of spirit. From his perspective, “Each motion or action should contain physical or psychological risk. Only a dance on the edge of control reveals the honest life. . . . Our work is to transform (sometimes abruptly, sometimes gently) the space within the body.” Working from interior impulse rather than external form, Iova-Koga, director of the multi-disciplinary group inkBoat, asks students to “find the core reason for movement, whether kinesthetic or imagistic,” while noting that at the same time “some movements and shapes carry a strong kinesthetic ‘message’ in the body.” Ultimately, the work must live in the moment of both the dancer and the audience. This requires an awareness of the surrounding environment, and the ability to listen.
A core goal in Butoh training is moving toward increased presence. Leigh Evans, a solo artist who draws from a variety of Asian movement practices in her teaching, notes that “Butoh has provided a path for me to tap into deeper aspects of my experience as a living being, inviting me to find the breath of many other creatures and life forms. The slowness of the dance offers me a deep awareness practice in which I can feel every cell of my body awakening. I am able to listen deeply inside and let the dance emerge through me. Shifting internal states manifest in form, darkness, and the hidden are brought to light.” In her workshop “Anatomy of Presence,” students tap into the Hara, or energy center, to open the body to both sound and movement, shifting from “unconscious impulse into conscious creative expression,” which lets the dance “reflect the shifting inner landscape of your being.” Artist/teacher Tanya Calamoneri further notes that both Butoh and Action Theater (an improvised practice developed by Ruth Zaporah) require similar heightened awareness and spontaneity in performance, and she sees in each “rich possibilities for building new movement vocabulary—not just gestures or other ‘steps’ layered on top of classical dance techniques, but entirely new ways to create movement images and even to perceive the body.” She notes, “For Butoh to survive, it must continue to be internalized and digested so that it can grow and change. Otherwise, our performances become museum pieces, and I don’t think that was what Hijikata intended.”
Much like Contact Improvisation—a dance developed by Steve Paxton in the early 70s in which partners explore movement possibilities while in physical contact—Butoh is designed to be shared. While Hijikata and Ohno are cited as founders, and master artist/teachers such as Akaji Maro (Dairakudakan), Min Tanaka (Body Weather Farm), Ushio Amagatsu (Sankai Juku), Akira Kasai, and Ko Murobushi draw those eager to learn from a source, the true learning happens as each individual uses and develops these initial encounters in an ongoing practice. Festivals such as those in San Francisco and Seattle in the 1990s, and the New York festival in the 2000s, have been instrumental in bringing teachers to this country for training, while also exposing audiences to less stereotypical Butoh stage performance. TEN PEN CHii art labor holds a dance exchange project called eX...it! every four years at Schloss Bröllin, Germany that brings together students and teachers from all over the world to practice Butoh, and Caveartspace in Brooklyn, NY has just started a Butoh-Kan training program that offers instruction by various international teachers. They are also developing an online resource for events worldwide (to be launched in late 2008). Many other Butoh teachers travel worldwide, giving workshops of varying lengths. From these offerings, our call as artists and audiences in this country is not to define and perfect Japanese Butoh but instead to create our own version. Studying with a master teacher can help us start to think, move, and create from a different perspective rather than adding to our repertory of movement techniques and dance genres, but Butoh is a praxis, and whether danced or observed, it invokes a change in one’s own body and mind. The results of this change are only just starting to become visible.
Web Resources for classes, performances, and info
Kazuo Ohno (Japan): http://www.kazuoohnodancestudio.com/english/top/
Caveartspace (New York): http://www.caveartspace.org/
Butoh San Francisco (San Francisco): http://www.butohsanfrancisco.net/
Butoh Net (international info): http://www.butoh.net/
Tadashi Endo (Germany): http://www.butoh-ma.de/
Yumiko Yoshioka (TEN PEN CHii art labor, Germany):
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/butoh/itto/yumiko.htm
Shinichi Iova-Koga and inkBoat (Bay Area/Germany): http://www.inkboat.com/
Leigh Evans (New York): http://www.healthyarts.com/leighevansyoga
Atsushi Takenouchi (Japan): http://www.jinen-butoh.com/schedule_e.html
Diego Piñón (Mexico): http://www.diegopinon.com/
Harupin-Ha (Bay Area): http://www.harupin-ha.org/
Further Reading
Fraleigh, Sondra Horton. Dancing Into Darkness: Butoh, Zen, and Japan. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999.
Hahn, Tomie. Sensational Knowledge: Embodying Culture through Japanese Dance. Middletown, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2007.
Klein, Susan Blakeley. Ankoku Butō: The Premodern and Postmodern Influences on the Dance of Utter Darkness. Cornell University East Asia Papers. Vol. 49. Ithaca, N.Y.: East Asia Program, Cornell University, 1988.
Munroe, Alexandra and Yokohama Bijutsukan, Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky. New York: H.N. Abrams, 1994.
Ohno, Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno. Kazuo Ohno’s World from Without and Within. Translated by John Barrett. Middletown, CN: Wesleyan University Press, 2004.