butoh-itto GooSayTen





JAPANESE BUTOH DANCE COMES TO ASHEVILLE


by Jim Curtis

member of board of directors of
Asheville Contemporary Dance Theatre N.C., U.S.A.


The Asheville Contemporary Dance Theatre (A.C.D.T.) under the direction of Susan Collard and co-director Giles Collard will host the Japanese Butoh dance-duo GooSayTen in early November. This will be a very special cultural event for Asheville. It will be the first time that authentic Japanese Butoh dancing has been performed in Asheville. Butoh dancers Itto Morita and Mika Takeuchi make up the duo. They will perform and give workshops from November 5 to November 8 as guest artists of A.C.D.T. Itto and Mika's arrival in Asheville will coincide with the Grand Opening of A.C.D.T.'s new dance theatre space. Susan and Giles invite all lovers of art and culture in North and South Carolina to an open-house gala event on November 5 where they can meet Itto and Mika.

BIOGRAPHICAL

Itto Morita

After attending intensive Butoh workshops, Itto Morita was invited in 1988 to join the dance troupe "Kobuzoku Arutai." He performed with them until 1991 in major Japanese cities such as Tokyo, Osaka and Sapporo. He left the troupe to continue his Butoh dance activities on his own until he met his present dance partner Mika Takeuchi in 1994. They formed their Butoh dance-duo "GooSayTen" in 1995. The name "GooSayTen" means "Incidentally Actualized Heaven," which hints at the improvisational nature of Butoh and the subjective events which can occur without intention or calculation during a Butoh performance. Since 1995 they have choreographed a number of works for GooSayTen that they have performed at various cities in Japan and in the USA, Germany and Poland. In late October they will perform their work "Toki-hime" at the Vancouver International Dance Festival.

Itto has also given Butoh workshops in the USA, Germany, Poland and Russia. Itto and Mika will give a workshop entitled "Mind-body Learning by Butoh Dance Method" at the 35th American Dance Therapy Association in Seattle at the end of October.

Itto Morita, the Butoh dancer and choreographer, is also Toshiharu Kasai, research scientist specializing in cognitive psychology and the relationship between mind and body. His studies have included the archetypal psychology of Carl Jung and the humanistic psychology of Carl Rogers. He is associate professor at the Hokkaido Institute of Technology located in the city of Sapporo on the northern-most island of Japan.

Mika Takeuchi

After participating in the 1993 Modern Dance Festival MAI, Mika Takeuchi began her Butoh dance activities with Itto and other Butoh dancers in 1994. This led to the formation of GooSayTen with Itto in 1995. Since then her activities have been mainly with GooSayTen, but she has also been a guest Butoh dancer with the highly regarded Nunogami Dance Co. , has collaborated on a dance piece with Haruhiko Saga, a Japanese Hohmay singer, and will paticipate in other Butoh events such as "Earth Celebration 2000" on Sado island.

WHAT IS BUTOH?

Butoh is an avant-garde Japanese dance form originated in the 1950's by Tatsumi Hijikata. From a cultural viewpoint, it grew out of the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima, the American occupation and the resulting social upheaval. On a more personal level, it grew out of Hijikata's childhood and its many hardships. At that time in the 1930's many farmers died of starvation. Families tried to sell their daughters to brothels in Tokyo and other cities in order to survive. It was the pain of his personal existence and the suffering he saw around him that influenced him most as an artist.

Butoh dancer Itto Morita, in telling how he composes Butoh dances, says that he is not influenced by literature or big historical events. Because each person experiences his/her own personal suffering and fate, there is no need to rely on someone else's written text. Itto describes his creative process this way: "I try to excavate my own life through my body that has undergone a variety of troubles."

One of the key concepts for understanding Butoh is "butoh-tai" (butoh-body). This concept refers to the inner state of consciousness of the Butoh dancer while performing. It refers to the dancer's subjective mental-physical attitude that integrates (unifies) the normally split psychological elements such as conscious vs unconscious, subject vs object, body vs mind. An example of the subject-object split is that of a ballet dancer visualizing her body as a separate object to be manipulated and placed in various pre-determined configurations.

Butoh dancers have a lot more freedom than conventional dancers. They are free of the various restrictions of the more traditional dance styles. But because of the uniqueness of each individual (our personal and cultural history) every Butoh dancer is different and a wide variety of performance styles and choreographic productions naturally result. Conventional dancers and choreographers generally try to represent a story or scenario. Butoh dancers expose their deepest self within the context of their unique personal and cultural history. Because the essence of Butoh is so deeply personal (and deeply spiritual for many) anything said about it cannot exhaust or give full expression to the contents of the Butoh experience. That's what makes Butoh such a "slippery fish" when we try to pin it down and clearly define it.

Some Butoh dancers are not interested in the spiritual-mystical dimensions of Butoh. They approach it simply as performing artists and entertainers. Of course any Butoh performance contains these artistic and entertainment dimensions. But many Butoh dancers are much more interested in opening themselves inwardly to the spiritual-mystical dimensions of their deepest being. Some Butoh dancers perform mainly for the audience--others perform mainly for themselves. The latter try to approach Butoh with deep humility in the spirit of explorers hoping to excavate and unearth the deeper layers of the mind-body experience that for them is the soul of Butoh. For them, there can never be the final word that reveals the ultimate secret of Butoh. They can only embrace its mystery.

It should also be mentioned that Butoh is not always Ankoku Butoh (Dance of Darkness). Many Butoh dancers like to emphasize the more ridiculous and laughable aspects of the human condition. In one performance, two Butoh dancers tried to push big pieces of cake into each other's mouth--first jokingly, then more and more seriously so that the scene was transformed into one of comic absurdity.
Because it is such a slippery fish, it is helpful to classify Butoh as follows:

  1. Original Butoh -- danced and choreographed by Hijikata.

  2. Classical Butoh -- danced by Hijikata's disciples and the 2nd and 3rd
    generation of Butoh performed mainly by dancers with a Japanese cultural background.

  3. Butoh (with no qualifiers) -- all other forms of Butoh (irrespective of culture or lineage from Hijikata).

But it is the essence of Butoh--not its cultural & ethnic characteristics--that has deeply influenced the dance community in the Western world. By definition, Westernized Butoh can never be the Original or Classical Butoh. But it has developed into a sub-category of Japanese Butoh by the very fact that it struggles to overcome the boundaries of conventional Western dance forms. That's exactly what Hijikata accomplished in Japan; he destroyed the conventions of both Japanese and Western dance forms and originated his own "un-dance" that he called Ankoku Butoh (Dance of Darkness).

Here's what Buttoh dancer Itto Morita says about his own art form: "In the most ideal and 'essential' Butoh performance, what the audience sees is not the dancer's body but a non-materialized world--as if the dancer's body has become a prism allowing the audience to see something latent behind the performer. What the dancer experiences during the performance is like a dream during the night, and he/she gradually notices afterwards that there is a spiritual calmness in the depth of his/her heart without clearly knowing why. It is evidence of a return from a pilgrimage through the split parts of the self, and a recovery or creation of his/her wholeness."



Asheville Performances

From the repertoire of works that they have choreographed for GooSayTen, Itto and Mika have selected one called "Toki-hime" for performing at A.C.D.T.'s new theatre space. They will give two performances of it . (See below for date and time.) "Toki-hime" (toe-key-he-meh) means "Princes Toki." Toki is the name of a Japanese crested Ibis on the verge of extinction. Many Japanese venerate the Toki in almost the same way as the ancient Egyptians venerated the Ibis. After seeing a performance of Toki-hime, a member of the audience expressed the experience with this poetic flow of words:

"Duo Butoh evocators drift across subconscious terrain, dreaming a Toki's scarlet dream as a princess of the old good Japan; a tenacious dream of lost kingdom's legendary metamorphosis and madness."

Asheville Workshops

In addition to the two performances of Toki-hime, Itto and Mika will also give two Butoh dance workshops. (See below for date and time.) The goal of the workshops is the integration of body, mind and spirit. The content of their workshops has been deeply influenced by the psychosomatic therapy systems of M. Noguchi and T. Takeuchi, who have been very influential in Japan but little known in the West. Many of the physical exercises developed by Noguchi and the bodywork of Takeuchi (developed independently of Western psychosomatic methods) will be included in the workshops. These exercise and bodywork systems have been used as effective training methods by actors and dancers throughout Japan.

The workshops include exercises for relaxation, untying the body, and unfastening the participant's defensive mind-set (or body-set). Each participant tries to open his/her mind and perceive what is really going on both inside and outside of his/her mind-body as well as the partner's mind-body.
The basic idea of Noguchi Taiso (physical exercises) is that our body is not a skeleton with muscles and flesh on it, but a kind of water bag in which our bones and viscera are floating. He places great emphasis on the significance of the weight of our body, saying: "Listen to the god of weight. Muscles exist not for resisting and controlling gravity. Muscles are the ears for listening to the words of this god--Gravity."


		Open House, Workshop and Performance Schedule

OPEN HOUSE:	Sunday Nov. 5 at 7:00 pm to 9:00 pm

WORKSHOPS: Monday Nov. 6 at 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm Tuesday Nov. 7 at 10:00 am to 1:00 pm $30.00 for one workshop, $50 for two.
PERFORMANCES: Tuesday Nov. 7 at 8:00 pm Wednesday Nov. 8 at 8:00 pm $8.00 admission
A.C.D.T.'s dance theatre space is located at: 20 Commerce St. Asheville, NC (next to the New Studio of Dance)
Note: The dance theatre space has limited seating capacity. Order your performance tickets as soon as possible. Call Susan or Giles at: 704-254-2621 (studio) 704-254-2137 (home)