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These are memos about questions and possible answers that I had in my Butoh workshops. All are not conclusive but tentative, but useful to deepen my understanding more for my Butoh practice and performing Butoh. I would be happy if you find any clues for your Butoh related actitives. |
* Only Japanese people can perform Butoh...?! (Dec.13, 2009)
There are still some Butoh dancers insisting that non-Japanese can not perform authentic Butoh. It is o.k. to think so as Japan is a democratic country with freedom of speech. But, as one of Japanese Butoh dancers I would like to say that it is totally wrong.
I and Mika were invited to perform in Seattle in 1998 for a small festival after a video audition process. We were very happy that our Butoh was acknowledged by people with non-Japanese cultures. Since then, we have performed and had Butoh workshops/lectures in more than 30 cities (I don't remember now) outside Japan. As I have been working in a college studying and teaching psychology, together with dancethrapy sessions as Mika has been doing, we could attend dance festivals in foreign countries several times a year because my schedule was always too tight to fly even when we were invited. Through our activities abroad, we have found, also in outside Japan, that there are always some people who will become a nice Butoh dancer regardless of their cultural backgrounds.
In 1999, we were invited to attend a month long Butoh project "Ex..it'99" in 1999 in Germany and Poland, where there were about 15 Butoh professionals ,four or five were Japanese Butoh dancers and the rest were non Japanese. We talked, performed, ate, and travelled together. Their dance styles and ideas about Butoh were somehow different from Japanese Butoh dancers, of course, and I started thinking whether non-Japanse Butoh is possible or not while watching their movements and behavior in the daily life.
I heard that no Japanese butoh dancers were invited for the previous event, "Ex...it'95". (Please ask Yumiko in Schloss Broellin in Germany). It seemed that they tried to create their own Butoh dances without Japanese factors. There was a big Butoh event in 1995 in Berlin, and it was said that there were about 50 thousands people gathering to watch Japanese Butoh dancers. We have never had such a big Butoh event in Japan. I felt that although Butoh was born in Japan but could not grow big in its birth place.
In 1980, Sankaijuku flew to France to perform, and they ignited Butoh boom in Europe and U.S.A. After that, a lot of Japanese Butoh dancers left Japan and started performing and teaching Butoh outside Japan. So, when we were invited in 1999 for "Ex...it'99", about 20 years passed since Europe acknowledged Japanese Butoh. It is 2009 now, so that 30 years has passed since then. And, is it safe to say that only Japanese people can perform Butoh although non-Japanese Butoh dancers have been performing and living on Butoh around the world ?
There are some reasons why Japanese Butoh dancers may feel in that way: One is concerning with physical differences, and the other with cultural.
- Physical differences
Japanese people's legs are conveniently short for a low posture with knees deeply bent, and it is true that most Westerners find it very difficult or are reluctant to do so. (Their ankles are often too tight to squat, and are not so comfortable for Japanese toilet with no chair.) As there are very important factors in the low position for Butoh performance, it is necessary to learn Butoh . But keeping a low posture for a long time is not essential in Butoh. There are two points about the low posture: 1) It is necessary to have a hard time to acquire the sense of heaviness or hardship through the low position. 2) It is necessary to experience the weight of one's body in order to understand the ideas of Noguchi Taiso (physical exercise) that has been utilized widely by Japanese traditional Butoh dancers.
The physical dimension of one's body surely determins how the person moves or dances, and big Westerners with longer legs have to create their own "Butoh" dance. Their "Butoh" might not look like Japanese Butoh, and this might become a reason why some Japanese Butoh dancers claim: "non-Japanese peoeple can not perform Butoh". By the way, how about small non-Japanese people whose physical size is the standard Japnanese ? Still no good for Butoh ? My personal impression about this is that the variance of bodily size, flexibility, strength, etc. is very big even among Japanese people and also among non-Japanese people, and it is almost pointless to make a simple comparison between Japanese vs. non-Japanese in terms physical differences.
- Cultural differences
I think Japan is a kind of cultural "Galapagos" because we had closed the country for about 400 years, isolating it from outside world before the Meiji government opened the country in 1868. Non-dichotomic or non Cartesian ideas about the body are popular in Japan as shown by a simple and common Japanese word "mi" connotating "body-mind". (My related paper will be published in the beginning of 2010.) I had a presentation for EJRC seminar (Europe Japan Research Centre) in Oxford Brookes University about the cultural differences seen in Butoh: "Butoh Dance: A 'Non-egocentric' approach of Body-Mind in Japanese Culture" (Nov.25, 2009).
If you are said that you can not do Butoh because your cultural backgrounds are not Japanese, it is partially right because it is difficult to assimilate yourself into a different culture perfectly. But, can all Japanese people do Butoh because they have the necessary cultural backgrounds ? Definitely no. Only a small number of Japanese people would become a Butoh dancer although they have the cultural backgrounds. Why ?! Because, Butoh demands physical and mental devotion, but most people are not only indifferent to it but also incapable to do so.The situation is the same outside Japan. There are always some people who would become a good Butoh dancer from this point of view, and many would not, like in Japan.
* "Indifference to Butoh" is clearly seen in our Butoh history in Japan: Japan has been indifferent to Butoh and its big cultural impacts to other countries. Hijikata's and Motofuji's Asbestos Hall, a Mecca of Butoh, in Tokyou has been sold out due to a debt they had. Most Japanese dancers don't know anything about Butoh, and they would learn that "BUTOH" is rather popular when performing abroad.
(There is no special connotation in the name of "Asbestos Hall". The family of Akiko Motofuji contributed a lot to build the hall, and she named after her parent's business, importing asbestos to Japan several decades ago.)
- authentic factors in Butoh
When Westerners watched Butoh performance for the first time, they seemed to be charmed by exotic things, maybe orientally foreign, in it in 1980s. But, it is not the orientalism or exoticism that moved Western performers, but something real, spiritual or iconoclastic that drove them to acquire it. We have taught non-Japanese Butoh students in our studio in Sapporo, Japan, coming from about 20 different countries, and they seem to have had at least two purposes: a) to learn so-called Butoh dance in Japan with Japanese traditional characteristics, and b) to grasp essential aspects in Butoh that attracts people regardless of cultural differences between Oriental or Western.
A wheel-chaired dancer attended one of our intensive Butoh workshop in our studio. She was an Israeli professional dancer who was seeking something authentic in Butoh. A couple of people with physical difficulties and pains in their bodies participated in one of my workshop in London. A physiotherapist in London who gives a kind of dancing intervention with her client is very interested in Butoh. They seem to sense that there is something real or authentic in Butoh to perceive their own world deeply and develope their own living world widely. And, I am the one who has been studying Butoh in that sense from the viewpoint of body-oriented pscyhotherapy and pyschology.
Non-Japanese dancers may not perform like Japanese Butoh dancers do, but their performance would be authentic Butoh when they succeed in actualizing essential factors in Butoh... But, what is Butoh then ?
* What is Butoh ? (Dec.13,2009)
I think we have to divide the Butoh history into two parts: 1) Japanese (traditional) Butoh untill 1980s, 2) internationalized Butoh after 1990s (with some overlapping period). It is mainly because Sankaijuku, Ohno,etc. started performing abroad in 1980s, and Hijikata died in 1986, and internatiozation of Butoh started in 1980s and Butoh proliferated worldwide in 1990s.
In Barcelona Butoh event in 2009, four Butoh dancers, Tadashi Endo, Minako Seki, Imre Thorman, and Itto Morita (me), were invited. At a talk session about Butoh, the audience enjoyed a lot because four dancers had very different ideas and history of Butoh. Tadashi Endo explained later in a Butoh film event in London, saying that Butoh is a kind of river where different fish lives, and their shapes and swimming patterns are not the same....
When my Butoh partner, Mika, started practicing Butoh with me, I decided not to teach her the traditional Butoh or what I learned in a Butoh troupe. What she underwent was physical and mental exercises used in Butoh training, and she had to develop her own way to perform. However, her peformances were often regarded as "traditional" Butoh. Some Butoh dancers even criticized her dance as "replication of old Butoh". No ways.
I used to belong to a small Butoh troupe for 3-4 years in Hokkaido, the northernmost prefecture, where there was almost no traditions or conncections to Butoh, where "Hoppo Butoh Ha"(northern Butoh sect) came all the way from Tokyo and started Butoh activities and dissolved in 3-4 years. Because it was a poor land in terms of Butoh tradition, we had to pursue Butoh seriously for ourselves.
Tadashi Endo had the similar story. He started Butoh when he was living in Goettingen, Germany, and talked to Kazuo Ohno. His Butoh dance is his own creation without direct connections to any Japanese Butoh dancers. Maybe, becasue of total immersion to Butoh, Mika and Tadashi also could develop her/his own dance style and strong impacts when performing.
I think there are two factors necessary in Butoh: a) realness, seriousness, honesty, authenticity, etc. that is something not fake for the performer. b) iconoclastic, self-destructive, self-betraying factors that can be "implosive" for the performer.
At the same time, I feel it necessary, in the practical sense, to divide a Butoh talk into two parts whehter it is about a) Butoh performance or Butoh dance piece, or b) Butoh training or exercises.
Most Butoh dancers are chiefly interested in (a) performing Butoh. Because any Butoh piece is influenced by various real factors, the discussion about Butoh performance may deflect from some central core of Butoh. I would rather like to talk about (b) Butoh training and exercises because it is easier to think and experience essential points of Butoh in its "purer" form without intention about how to show it to an audience.
"Allowing the grasped hand to open spending 3 minutes" is one of Butoh exercises, a symbolical one. It is not a Butoh performance, but a good occasion to learn what happens in the body-mind while experiencing "the palm opening". "Dancing within a clothes" would be another example to learn your body-mind by perceiving how your skin rubs the inside of the clothes. Because I am very interested in this direction of Butoh, I use the term "Body-mind exploration by Butoh" (or "Body Learning Therapy based upon Butoh" as a body-oriented psychotherapy) that has basically nothing to do with performing Butoh to show an audience.
I am sorry for no definite conclusions, of course, about the definition of Butoh, but I think your understanding has become a little bit deeper by reading this article and thinking about it. Then, please start practicing to experience it bodily. It can be "an embodied primary process".
(* Please check my Butoh related papers about this.)
* Not "the Atomic bomb"... (Nov.,2006)
Many dance critics prefer connecting Butoh with the Atomic bomb, but as far as I have studied Hijikata's books, there were no descriptions found about the atomic bombs. His writings show, I believe, that he was not a political person but a dominating dancer and artist talented also in writing. There is only one thing that shows a relationship of Butoh and atomic bombs: A movie titled "Atomic bomb and navel" directed by a Japanese photographer Eiko Hosoe who published "Kamaitachi" photographic album of Hijikata. But, the content of the movie is very funny although the bomb exploded at the last scene. In the World War II, Tokyo was bombed out in an air-raid by three hundreds twenty five B29-bombers, and about 200,000 - 100,000 people were burned to death one night. It well matches the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Akiko Motofuji, Hijikata's wife who died in 2003, told me what happened in Tokyo at the night, but she did not mention to the atomic bombs in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is not the Atomic bomb for Japanese citizens, but they are (atomic) bombs. When dance critics use the phrase "the Atomic bomb" describing something about Butoh, it is , I believe, surely an easy rhetorical expression that is nothing to do with Butoh itself. Butoh came from the hardship and poverty that Hijikata and the people of the rustic northeast prefectures had suffered historically. See ganimata or bandy-leg, and crooked back.
(This article was sent to Wikipedia by T.K.,Sapporo)* Ms. Paola Esposito, a Butoh performer and researcher in UK writing her Ph.D dissertation about Butoh in term of social anthropology, found a paper that showed first dance critics who combined Butoh with "atomic bomb" in 1980s. (personal communication, Nov.25, 2009)
* Most of the following contents below were written in 1990s. Although my understandings about each theme have been changed to some extent or deepened a lot, I keep these old descriptions for reference as my past records (including some dubious English expressions :). Please be careful that Itto Morita might think in a different way in 21st century.(Nov.15, 2009)
*Rolling eyes back or the white-eyes (in Japanese)
Butoh dancers sometime roll their eyes back when dancing and their eyes look all white. If the rolled back white eyes are only for visual effect of Butoh performance, you could acheive the same thing by using white (non transparent) contact lenses, and it would not deserve explanation here.There are two types of Butoh dancer/troupe concerning the rolled back eyes. Some butoh dancers/choreographers utilize the white eyes as a way of expressing something unsocial, grotesque. Others experience the rolled back eyes naturally occurring during performance. Although it is difficult to tell two types of "white eyes" just by watching the eyes, you can soon notice the difference if you can look at the dancer from near and keep gazing on the bodily movements and transformation. You will tell either the mind-body situation that elicits the eyes' reactions or an intentional attempt to roll his/her eyes back. I believe that the former is persuasive than the latter in Butoh.
Once asked by interviewers outside Japan, _Semimaru, member of Sankaijuku, explained that the rolling back eyes are for watching the insice, the internal self..." He told us that he was not serious abou his answer at that time, but he realized later that his answer unintentionally catches a truth of eyes' rolling back.
I feel that the western society has been evolved too much into a visually oriented world, overly dependend on what is seen by eyes. It makes everything turn into an OBJECT, and the ample information obtained by other sense organs is not taken in and lost. Eyes objectify what is seen and make up a gap between the perceivers and the object. Whereas, touching, smelling and tasting don't seperate the object from the perceiving person. The more you perceive, the more unified. The object and "I" soak into each other.
Without visual comprehension or at least without excessive dependence on the visual information, the world appears utterly different. In order to awake other senses, it is surely neccessary to cut down visual depedence.
In Butoh, we often use so-called "hun-gun"(half-opend eyes) so as not to be confined by either the visually recognized outer world or the inner world. Buddha's eyes are sometimes half open by this reason: Open to every channel...
I would like to offer you an exercise: a Blind Walk exercise to stop vision's superiority.( I thank Richard Van Dusen for his sincere question and comments about this topic. Itto: Apr.3, 1999)
You may know or have already experienced, but it will help you to deepen your bodily awareness further. Ask your partner to take your hand and to go out for a walk for 30 minutes - 1 hour, of course, with your both eyes closed, with no verbal instructions or cues given by the partner. This is an exercise for reconstruction of your sensing system. Your partner lead you by the hand. Walk side by side with no verbal communication. (If it is safe enough, it is also nice to take off shoes for a while to perceive the turf by your soles. You will find your soles a sensitive organ.)
After the exercise, you will be surprised to find that you are not driven by visual information even while your eyes are wide open.
*Choreographing a Butoh dance piece
I have choreographed Butoh dance pieces for my Butoh dance group GooSayTen. When I make a Butoh dance piece, I have several basic rules which have accumulated through my Butoh dance activities.
- I don't try to express any emotions or sentiments by movements.
I don't think that movements should express emotions. Movements come out unconsciously when you feel like moving, and such the movements already have emotional values without any intention to try to express something. Usually it suffices, and I belive it is always sufficient in Butoh. Verbalization or intentional intervention to the movements may extract clear cut images/emotions from the movements, and the movements choreographed by this type of intervention may be evaluated as "sophisticated", but at the same time, something unspeakable and significant in Butoh is omitted by verbalization. It is not Butoh if there are not unverbalized emotions or sentiments. In this sense, a Butoh dance piece may appear as a fragment of dream you have while sleeping.
I remember an instance: After our stage performance, a poet asked me "What did you express by your arms' twisting movements?" I relplied "Nothing". While I was dancing, what I felt was that I was drifting in a dark space and my body wanted to twist by itself. I was not interested in and did not have any intention to express emotions.
- I use sounds/music in order to make a basic mind state.
The Butoh dancer on the stage hears the sound/music. The sound turns the atomosphere into some emotional state gradually. Sometimes dark, heavy emotions are stirred, bright, cheerful emotions in other cases. Here, three componets, the sound and bodily movements and mind situation start the mutual interaction with a basic tone of emotions elicited by the sound. The sound stimulates the dancer's body and mind, and may elicit bodily movements or mental shifts of emotions. Bodily movements or uncoscious mental urges may challenge the outer world composed of the sound, stage set, lighting,etc.
It is impossible in this type of dance to choreograph in detail, and practicing a Butoh piece is not a remembering movement sequence but an experimentation of confrontation of three factors: Body, mind, and the outer world(sound, stage set, lighting...)
Here, Butoh dancing is not a fixed product choreographed by someone or yourself, but is a transformational process of the space with the dancer's body and mind. An ultimate meaning of Butoh seems to lie around this situation.
- I include the breathing pattern of audience in Butoh dance component.
It is meaningless to ask the audience verbally to participate in the transformation process of the space. But, Butoh dancers, when dancing in a rather small space, sometimes succeed in synchronizing the breathing pattern of audience by dancer's bodily movements, and leading audience into a transformed world through synhronized bodily reactions of audience. This bodily synchronicity supportted by audience enables the dancer to go deep into the unkown world that the Butoh dancer him/herself never has reached. It may be a supreme bliss of Butoh dancers even when the world is a hell.
- I make my Butoh dance piece as an entertainment for audience who pays the fee, but...
I feel I need to satisfy the audience who pays the fee to some extent, but I believe that Butoh dance is not something to be seen as an entertainment, and that the fee is a money offering to a deity for the audience to stay there and keep watching what must not be seen by others. Because Butoh is a process and space where Butoh dancers miserably try to relive their forlorn wishes and devastating despairs (hence, sorrow or anger) which have been sealed deep in their minds, also in the audience's minds. But, at the same time, the Butoh performace itself is also an offering to a deity supported and sustained by the fact that audience exists and gazes.
(I sometimes feel while dancing that Butoh performance is a dynamic numinous pray. I reluctantly have to admit that something mysterious happened sometimes in our Butoh peformances. )
While writing this note, I was remembering my experiences in the Butoh dance workshop that Semimau (Sankaijuku's Butoh dancer) used to have. Sankaijuki is one of the most famous Butoh dance group and has been having stage performance in the U.S. and the Europe for 20 years. Their stage is really spectacular indeed, and it is the main reason for their success abroad. Semimaru taught us in his workshops various basic exercises with some choreographed Butoh dance pieces. My impression about his choreography was that :
(Itto: Sep.4,1998)
- Semimaru utilized bodily movements which occur by having a "OMOI".
The Japanese word OMOI he used in his workshop means thought, concept, image, intention, etc. It is difficult to give a clearcut definition of the word, but the central idea is concerned with what you have in your mind whether intentionally or not. "What you have in your mind lead your movements" would be a proper understanding of his explanation about Butoh dance.
- Semimaru told a story for a series of movements.
It may be a matter of course that a series of movements has its story, such as "you are walking in a garden, and suddenly fall down to the ground..." A story gives an OMOI... and OMOI leads bodily movements... The components of movement are not jumping, spin turning, running across the stage like in ballet or modern dance, but are arm waving, trunk swaying, body twisting, etc. which may not be ordinary gestures you usually see when people get emotional, but are rather nonce movements at the very time.
*Butoh "is something not to express"...
Hijikata's wife, Akiko Motofuji, told us ,when I and Mika Takeuchi visited her ASBESTOS STUDIO in April, that "Butoh is something not to express..." She was criticizing for a recent underdstanding that Butoh has its peculiar style, so-called Butoh like movements and postures. She emphasized importance of something unconsciously occurring, which are not intentionally performed when dancing.
However, I am afraid that I am not capable to understand what she was trying to convey to us by saying "Butoh is something not to express", because her nearly 40 years' Butoh experience is overwhelming, compared with my 10 years Butoh activities.
It is always difficult to stay in "NOT EXPRESSING SOMETHING" when you dance and choreograph a dance piece. (Distinction between intentional movements and unconscious movements is also a difficult problem in psychology. Ideomoter movements and hypnosis are examples for this.)Many questions: So-called Butoh dance performances we usually see might be something different from what Hijikata tried to create for the first time. So-called Butoh dancers might be mimicking superficial movements and poises which Hijikata happened to do... Endless questions and thinking loops.
My conclusion 10 years ago as a psychologist was that "JUST DO Butoh dance for verification". But, Butoh is still a mystery although Motfuji's words gave me a hint about it.
(Kasait: Aug.31)
*Butoh space.
Minor Butoh groups seldom can use a big stage for their performance "financially". But, this is one side of the story: Small space is thought to be essencial to Butoh dance in two respects. First, Butoh dancers sometimes use very delicate movements that can never be seen from the last seats of a theater: Such as eye movements, convulsion/spasm/twitch/tic, breathing patterns, or body distortions are only visible nearby if they are not exaggerated intentionally.
You may remember densely populated Asian cities like Tokyo where buildings and people are intertwined deeply and open space is rarely left for relaxation, or a tea-ceremony room in Japan which is small enough to see into every subtle motion of body or mind of guests while having a green tea: Dense space or space compression would be the term for these situations.
Second, Butoh dancers usually don't jump up high or turn briskly or run through the stage. These are for ballet or modern dances that prefer cutting a big space with strong and sharp jumping and turning. Butoh dance that was born in Japan is not interested in conquering a immense space, and rather chooses a niche for its own life.
DaiRakudaKan and Sankaiju, for example, have been known with their spectacular stages and succeded in their styles. One of the secrets of their success especially in the Western countries is ,I believe, space administration. Sankaijuku sometimes may be criticized by Butoh fans in Japan, saying that their performace is "too crude" or "too business-like". These words seem to point out that Sankaijuku is not confined to a niche and has a strategy using a large space effectively unlike the other minor/small Butoh groups that have sticked to a small space or to the basic idea of Butoh: in this sense, Butoh must be a near work. (kasait: Nov.2,1997)
*Noguchi Taiso
A physical exercise originated by Noguchi Michizo, is not known well outside Japan but has been used by many Butoh dancers, whose basic ideas consist of releasing bodily tension. I have been studying relaxation methods from the psychological point view and have found its effectiveness for both mind and body relaxation.
Butoh dance groups such as Dairakudakan, Sankaijuku, Semimaru, Arutai have utilized Noguchi Taiso as one of their body training methods.
*Not using mirrors in the Butoh lesson.
Semimaru and Ojima never used mirrors in lessons. Why? First, when you try to have a look at your posture, your posture will have been changed. Second, Butoh dancers must feel their internal bodily sensations first and must not rely on what you are looked like from outside. That is, not the visual perception, but the proprioceptive (bodily) perception comes first in Butoh dance.Practicing Noguchi Taiso, above, has much to do with this custom: In order to have a good command of the minimun tension/energy to make your body parts move 1mm, you should not waste your "attention resource" by directing its energy to the visual system. When you are watching your body on a mirror while dancing, you are not dancing, but you are analyzing the visual stimuli inside and might be losing the precious/subtle sensations in your body deep inside which can be a impetus to your next movement with some affective tones....
I was surprised to see that Semimaru or Ojima covered all the mirrors in the lesson room with black cloths. "Rather, use VCR. Watch later.", Semimaru said.
* Butoh and Buyoh
These words are basiclly the same Japanese word that means "dance/dancing" neutrally . Although the word "Buyoh" was(is) usually used for dance, Hijikata gradually came to prefer the word "butoh" and his dance was called "Ankoku Butoh" by famous writers, poets, artists who at that time had images of darkness by seeing his dark and heavy stages and his dancing. Hijikata began to use "Ankoku Butoh" as the term that refers to his dance since then.
(Mishima Yukio was a zealous fan of Hijikata's dance and gave him a various support. Hijikata's performance in 1959 was titled "Kinjiki" which was the same title of one of Mishima's novels. After that, Mishima got in touch with him...)(Nov.2,1979)
* Ankoku Butoh
"Ankoku Butoh" is the correct Japanese term in Japan.
The term "butoh" is now mainly used for "ballroom dancing" in Japan. In order to avoind possible misunderstanding, please use "Ankoku Butoh" when talking with Japanese people. "Ankoku" means darkness as "AN" is darkness and "KOKU" is black.
Notes written by Behavioral Scientist- Toshiharu Kasai | Butoh Dancer- Itto Morita
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