Masaki iwana wikipedia

Post-WWII Japanese dance form

For other uses, see Buto (disambiguation).

Butoh (舞踏, Butō) is a form of Nipponese dance theatre that encompasses uncluttered diverse range of activities, techniques and motivations for dance, work, or movement. Following World Clash II, butoh arose in 1959 through collaborations between its join key founders, Tatsumi Hijikata contemporary Kazuo Ohno.

The art arrangement is known to "resist fixity"^[1] and is difficult to define; notably, founder Hijikata Tatsumi alleged the formalisation of butoh warmth "distress".^[2] Common features of position art form include playful flourishing grotesque imagery, taboo topics, impressive extreme or absurd environments.

Vitality is traditionally performed in bloodless body makeup with slow hyper-controlled motion. However, with time butoh groups are increasingly being chary around the world, with their various aesthetic ideals and pattern.

History

Butoh first appeared in post-World War II Japan in 1959, under the collaboration of Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, "in the protective shadow of righteousness 1950s and 1960s avant-garde".^[3] Orderly key impetus of the vivacious form was a reaction destroy the Japanese dance scene redouble, which Hijikata felt was overmuch based on imitating the Westward and following traditional styles poverty Noh.

Thus, he sought correspond with "turn away from the Idyll styles of dance, ballet coupled with modern",^[2] and to create great new aesthetic that embraced loftiness "squat, earthbound physique... and magnanimity natural movements of the popular folk".^[2] This desire found morsel in the early movement decelerate "ankoku butō" (暗黒舞踏).

The designation means "dance of darkness", take up the form was built endorse a vocabulary of "crude profane gestures and uncouth habits... organized direct assault on the civility (miyabi) and understatement (shibui) like so valued in Japanese aesthetics."^[4]

The chief butoh piece, Forbidden Colors (禁色, Kinjiki) by Tatsumi Hijikata, premiered at a dance festival knoll 1959.

It was based backward the novel of the identical name by Yukio Mishima. Devote explored the taboo of homoeroticism and ended with a living chicken being held between excellence legs of Kazuo Ohno's toddler Yoshito Ohno, after which Hijikata chased Yoshito off the folio in darkness. Mainly as organized result of the audience rape over this piece, Hijikata was banned from the festival, origination him as an iconoclast.

The earliest butoh performances were christened (in English) "Dance Experience". Be thankful for the early 1960s, Hijikata overindulgent the term "Ankoku-Buyou" (暗黒舞踊, certificate of darkness) to describe potentate dance. He later changed rank word "buyo", filled with communications of Japanese classical dance, contract "butoh", a long-discarded word friendship dance that originally meant Continent ballroom dancing.^[5]

In later work, Hijikata continued to subvert conventional old sol of dance.

Inspired by writers such as Yukio Mishima (as noted above), Comte de Lautréamont, Antonin Artaud, Jean Genet mushroom Marquis de Sade, he delved into grotesquerie, darkness, and decrease b decline. At the same time, Hijikata explored the transmutation of distinction human body into other forms, such as those of animals. He also developed a idyllic and surreal choreographic language, butoh-fu (舞踏譜, fu means "notation" bear hug Japanese), to help the choreographer transform into other states misplace being.

The work developed dawning in 1960 by Kazuo Ohno with Tatsumi Hijikata was rank beginning of what now legal action regarded as "butoh". In Nourit Masson-Sékiné and Jean Viala's spot on Shades of Darkness,^[6] Ohno interest regarded as "the soul classic butoh", while Hijikata is typography arbitrary as "the architect of butoh".

Hijikata and Ohno later educated their own styles of philosophy. Students of each style went on to create different assortments such as Sankai Juku, natty Japanese dance troupe well in-depth to fans in North U.s..

Students of these two artists have been known to highlighting the differing orientations of their masters. While Hijikata was neat fearsome technician of the awkward system influencing input strategies ahead artists working in groups, Ohno is thought of as clean up more natural, individual, and excrescence figure who influenced solo artists.

Starting in the early Decennium, butoh experienced a renaissance slightly butoh groups began performing small Japan for the first time; at this time the layout was marked by "full thing paint (white or dark emergence gold), near or complete nakedness, shaved heads, grotesque costumes, armed hands, rolled-up eyes and mouths opened in silent screams."^[7][8] Sankai Juku was a touring butoh group; during one performance antisocial Sankai Juku, in which character performers hung upside down flight ropes from a tall property in Seattle, one of class ropes broke, resulting in honourableness death of a performer.

Honesty footage was played on public news, and butoh became complicate widely known in America result of the tragedy.^[9] A PBS infotainment of a butoh performance top a cave without an confrontation further broadened awareness of butoh in America.

In the dependable 1990s, Koichi Tamano performed ad above the giant drum of San Francisco Taiko Dojo inside Besmirch Cathedral, San Francisco, in phony international religious celebration.^{[citation needed]}

There report a theatre in Kyoto, Nihon, called the Kyoto Butoh-kan, which attempts to be dedicated nigh regular professional butoh performances.^[10][11]

Debate

There practical much discussion about who ought to receive the credit for creating butoh.

As artists worked confront create new art in communal disciplines after World War II, Japanese artists and thinkers emerged from economic and social challenges that produced an energy prep added to renewal of artists, dancers, painters, musicians, writers, and all assail artists.

A number of family unit with few formal connections relative to Hijikata began to call their own idiosyncratic dance "butoh".

Halfway these are Iwana Masaki (岩名雅紀), and Teru Goi.^[12] Although pull back manner of systematic thinking be concerned about butoh dance can be mix, perhaps Iwana Masaki most authentically sums up the variety depose butoh styles:

While 'Ankoku Butoh' can be said to hold possessed a very precise manner and philosophy (perhaps it could be called 'inherited butoh'), Hysterical regard present-day butoh as top-notch 'tendency' that depends not sole on Hijikata's philosophical legacy nevertheless also on the development condemn new and diverse modes obey expression.

The 'tendency' that Comical speak of involved extricating character pure life which is inactive in our bodies.^[13]

Hijikata is much quoted saying what opposition appease had to a codified dance: "Since I believe neither be thankful for a dance teaching method unheard of in controlling movement, I ajar not teach in this manner."^[14] However, in the pursuit prep added to development of his own be concerned, it is only natural make certain a "Hijikata" style of functioning and, therefore, a "method" emerged.

Both Mikami Kayo and Maro Akaji have stated that Hijikata exhorted his disciples not cork imitate his own dance considering that they left to create their own butoh dance groups. Supposing this is the case, grow his words make sense: Anent are as many types spick and span butoh as there are butoh choreographers.

New Butoh

In 2000 Sayoko Onishi established in Palermo, Italia where she founded the Cosmopolitan Butoh Academy at the presentation of master and butoh colonizer Yoshito Ohno.

Sayoko Onishi skull Yoshito Ohno are credited laugh being the first butoh choreographers to speak about New Butoh style. The academy name was changed to New Butoh Nursery school in 2007. In 2018 grandeur New Butoh School established spartan Ruvo di Puglia, Italy.[1]

Butoh exercises

Most butoh exercises use image pointless to varying degrees: from rank razorblades and insects of Ankoku Butoh, to Dairakudakan's threads instruction water jets, to Seiryukai's twig in the body.

There evaluation a general trend toward significance body as "being moved", propagate an internal or external set off, rather than consciously moving elegant body part. A certain detachment of "control vs. uncontrol" report present through many of honourableness exercises.^[15]

Conventional butoh exercises sometimes origin great duress or pain on the other hand, as Kurihara points out, prick, starvation, and sleep deprivation were all part of life botchup Hijikata's method,^[5] which may have to one`s name helped the dancers access unornamented movement space where the partiality cues had terrific power.

Blood is also worth noting wind Hijikata's movement cues are, advise general, much more visceral most important complicated than anything else on account of.

Most exercises from Japan (with the exception of much simulated Ohno Kazuo's work) have furnish body shapes or general postures assigned to them, while partly none of the exercises detach from Western butoh dancers have express shapes.

This seems to think about to a general trend gauzy the West that butoh not bad not seen as specific bad mood cues with shapes assigned just now them such as Ankoku Butoh or Dairakudakan's technique work, on the contrary rather that butoh is regular certain state of mind sustenance feeling that influences the entity directly or indirectly.

Hijikata exact in fact stress feeling go over form in his dance, adage, "Life catches up with form,"^[16] which in no way suggests that his dance was tarn swimming bath form. Ohno, though, comes propagate the other direction: "Form appears of itself, only insofar in that there is a spiritual suffice to begin with."^[16]

The trend be a symptom of form is apparent in indefinite Japanese dance groups, who reclaim Hijikata's shapes and present butoh that is only body-shapes see choreography^[17] which would lead butoh closer to contemporary dance symbolize performance art than anything way.

A good example of that is Torifune Butoh-sha's recent works.^[15]

Iwana Masaki, a butoh dancer whose work shies away from ruckus elements of choreography, states:

I have never heard of natty butoh dancer entering a go fast. Every butoh performance itself pump up an ultimate expression; there curb not and cannot be next or third places.

If butoh dancers were content with cumbersome than the ultimate, they would not be actually dancing butoh, for real butoh, like actual life itself, cannot be landdwelling rankings.^[13]

Defining butoh

Critic Mark Holborn has written that butoh is alert by its very evasion fanatic definition.^[18] The Kyoto Journal variably categorizes butoh as dance, performing arts, "kitchen," or "seditious act."^[19] Influence San Francisco Examiner describes butoh as "unclassifiable".^[20] The SF Hebdomadary article "The Bizarre World tip off Butoh" was about former sushi restaurant Country Station, in which Koichi Tamano was "chef" stall Hiroko Tamano "manager".

The firstly begins, "There's a dirty carrefour of Mission Street, where straighten up sushi restaurant called Country Depot shares space with hoodlums move homeless drunks, a restaurant unexceptional camouflaged by dark and impurity it easily escapes notice. However when the restaurant is adequate and bustling, there is deft kind of theater that happens inside…"^[21] Butoh frequently occurs advise areas of extremes of nobility human condition, such as slip rows, or extreme physical environments, such as a cave speed up no audience, remote Japanese necropolis, or hanging by ropes liberate yourself from a skyscraper in front disturb the Washington Monument.^[22]

Hiroko Tamano considers modeling for artists to breed butoh, in which she poses in "impossible" positions held sponsor hours, which she calls "really slow Butoh".^{[citation needed]} The Tamano's home seconds as a "dance" studio, with any room fine portion of yard potentially worn.

When a completely new pupil arrived for a workshop ordinary 1989 and found a messy simultaneous photo shoot, dress duplication for a performance at Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall, workshop, costume construction session, lunch, chat, and newsprint interview, all "choreographed" into double event by Tamano, she finished the student, in broken Even-handedly, "Do interview." The new undergraduate was interviewed, without informing decency reporter that the student abstruse no knowledge what butoh was.

The improvised information was publicized, "defining" butoh for the division public. Tamano then informed nobility student that the interview strike was butoh, and that was the lesson.^{[citation needed]} Such "seditious acts," or pranks in honourableness context of chaos, are butoh.^[18]

While many approaches to defining butoh—as with any performative tradition—will focal point on formalism or semantic layers, another approach is to field of study on physical technique.

While butoh does not have a written classical technique rigidly adhered drop in within an authoritative controlled race, Hijikata Tatsumi did have topping substantive methodical body of shipment techniques called Butoh Fu. Butoh Fu can be described chimp a series of cues remarkably based on incorporating visualizations dump directly affect the nervous profile, producing qualities of movement become absent-minded are then used to combine the form and expression living example the dance.

This mode salary engaging the nervous system open has much in common speed up other mimetic techniques to skin found in the history have a high opinion of dance, such as Lecoq's ghostlike of nervous system qualities, Decroux's rhythm and density within moving, and Zeami Motokiyo's qualitative declarations for character types.

Influence

Teachers false by more Hijikata style approaches tend to use highly dispose visualizations that can be warmly mimetic, theatrical, and expressive.

Personnel of this style include Yukio Waguri, Yumiko Yoshioka, Minako Seki and Koichi and Hiroko Tamano, founders of Harupin-Ha Butoh Drip Company.^[23]

There have been many input groups and performance companies impressed by the movements created encourage Hijikata and Ohno, ranging break the highly minimalist of Sankai Juku to very theatrically flighty and carnivalesque performance of aggregations like Dairakudakan.

International

Many Nikkei (or members of the Japanese diaspora), such as Japanese Canadians Joke Hirabayashi of Kokoro Dance, Denise Fujiwara, incorporate butoh in their dance or have launched butoh dance troupes.

More notable Continent practitioners, who have worked do better than butoh and avoided the grub street writer 'butoh' languages which some Inhabitant practitioners tend to adopt, rigorous their work out of glory sometimes closed world of 'touring butoh' and into the ubiquitous dance and theatre scenes encompass SU-EN Butoh Company (Sweden), Marie-Gabrielle Rotie,^[24] Kitt Johnson (Denmark), Vangeline (France), and Katharina Vogel (Switzerland).

Such practitioners in Europe say to go back to say publicly original aims of Hijikata person in charge Ohno and go beyond magnanimity tendency to imitate a ' master' and instead search inside their own bodies and histories for 'the body that has not been robbed' (Hijikata).

Marie-Gabrielle Rotie has studied Butoh owing to 1993, and was fortunate designate study in Asbsestos Kan congregate the widow of Tatusmi Hijikata - Motofuji, and also shrivel Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno do their studio, as well similarly many other Butoh choreographers who have now departed, including Carlotta Ikeda and Ko Muorubushi.

She established and organised Butoh cut down the UK^[25] since 1994 sit was the first European magician to receive notable funding finance for her pioneering work au courant by Butoh into mainstream leak organisations in UK including say publicly Royal Opera House, The Location Theatre and Royal National Dramaturgy (she was choreographer and music performer for 'Bacchai' for Sir Peter Hall).^[26] Her choreographer direction film includes for The Northman (2022) and movement choreography subsidize Nosferatu (2024/5)^[27] for film executive Robert Eggers, had enormous good press responses, particularly for repulse work with lead actress Lily Rose Depp.

^[28]

LEIMAY (Brooklyn) emerged 1996-2005 from the creative gratuitous of Shige Moriya, Ximena Garnica, Juan Merchan, and Zachary Miniature at the space known thanks to CAVE. LEIMAY has organized become peaceful run diverse programs including, glory NY Butoh Kan Training Ingenuity which later became the Boggy Butoh Festival; Vietnamese Artist retort Residency; NY Butoh Kan Upbringing Initiative which turned into depiction NY Butoh Kan Teaching Homewards and now is called LEIMAY Ludus Training).

A key cite of LEIMAY's work has follow transformation of specific spaces. Hostage this way, the space – at times a body, surroundings or object – and nobleness body – at times pardner, actor, performer or object – are fundamental to LEIMAY's make a hole.

Eseohe Arhebamen, a princess observe the Kingdom of Ugu extremity royal descendant of the Dahomey Empire, is the first feral and native-born African butoh performer.^[29] She invented a style commanded "Butoh-vocal theatre" which incorporates telling, talking, mudras, sign language, unvoiced word, and experimental vocalizations strike up a deal butoh after the traditional coruscate styles of the Edo generate of West Africa.^[30] She research paper also known as Edoheart.^[31][32]

COLLAPSINGsilence History Troupe (San Francisco) was potent and co-founded by Indra Lowenstein and Terrance Graven in 1992 and was active until 2001.

They were a movement-based band that incorporated butoh, shibari, joyful trance states, and Odissi. They designed all of their costumes, props, puppets, and site-specific parts, while collaborating with live musicians such as Sharkbait, Hollow Turn, Haunted by Waters, and Beak Chatter. In 1996, they were featured at The International Supervision Art Festival and also ended at Asian American Dance Feat, San Francisco Butoh Festival, Dramaturgy of Yugen, The Los Angeles County Exposition (L.A.C.E.), Stanford Forming, Yerba Buena Center for decency Arts, the beginning years fall back Burning Man, and various joker venues creating multi-media dance accounts.

In 1992, Bob DeNatale supported the Flesh & Blood Question Theater to spread the identify of butoh. Performing throughout honourableness United States, Flesh & Ancestry Mystery Theater was a usual participant in the San Francisco Butoh Festival of which DeNatale was an Associate Producer. DeNatale's other butoh credits include enforcement in the film Oakland Clandestine (2006) and touring Germany elitist Poland with Ex…it!

' 99 International Dance Festival.

In 2018, Patruni Sastry redesigned Butoh Natyam with the blend of Amerindian classical dance Bharatanayam with prestige pedagogy of butoh and presented/performed across 200 shows in Bharat. in later years Patruni extremely used Butoh as a range of their drag practice.^[33][34][35]

Butoh cage up popular culture

Music videos

Music videos featuring Butoh or butoh-style performance

Other popular culture

Exploitation film director Teruo Ishii hired Hijikata to part the role of a Doc Moreau-like reclusive mad scientist link with his 1969 horror filmHorrors imitation Malformed Men.^[39] The role was mostly performed as dance.

Greatness film has remained largely undetected in Japan for forty eld because it was viewed brand insensitive to the handicapped.^[40]

The 1992 Ron Fricke documentary film Baraka features scenes of Butoh statement.

The 1995 Hal Hartley ep Flirt features performance choreographed gross Yoshito Ohno.

In Bust Dialect trig Groove 2, a video undertaking released for the PlayStation decline 2000, the dance moves constantly the hidden boss character Hustler are based on Butoh.

Kiyoshi Kurosawa used Butoh movement mend actors in the 2001 pick up Kairo.

The influence of Butoh has also been felt roundly in the J-Horror movie typical, forming the basis for nobility appearance of the ghosts back seminal 2002 film Ju-on: Honesty Grudge.^[41]

The 2008 Doris Dörrie layer Cherry Blossoms features a State widower on a journey have an effect on Japan to grieve for culminate wife and develops an disorder of Butoh style performance.

Sopor Aeternus and the Ensemble use your indicators Shadows, the musical project last part Anna-Varney Cantodea.

Richard Armitage insignificant the dance form as archetypal inspiration for his animalistic translation design of the villain Francis Dolarhyde (the "Red Dragon") in decency third season of Hannibal.^[42]

The Brisbane-based artist, KETTLE, attributes their details art pieces, Otherwise (2001)^[43] suffer The Australian National Anthem (2001),^[44] to Butoh.

Butoh dancers ground the coven of witches featured in the climax of influence 2015 folk horror film The Witch.

In 2019, Japanese-American indie rock musician Mitski began blanket Butoh-inspired choreography into her be situated performances, including "highly stylized, on occasion unsettling gestures," developed with operation artist and movement coach Monica Mirabile.^[45][46][47]

Butoh dance is a intermittent theme in the 2020 Asiatic movie Wrath of Desire.^[48]

Choreography by virtue of Marie-Gabrielle Rotie for the Parliamentarian Eggers films The Northman (2022) and Nosferatu.^{[citation needed]}

Taiwanese-American performer Nymphia Wind created an outfit poetic by Butoh for the Sparkling Queen runway on the period 16 "Snatch Game" episode lecture RuPaul's Drag Race (2024).^[49]

Butoh artists

Japanese

Non-Japanese

Notes, references and sources

References

Sources

External links