DanceofDarkness

story by Usha Wennerstrand

“We shake hands with the dead, who send us encouragement from beyond our body; this is the unlimited power of Butoh...something is hiding in our subconscious, collected in our unconscious body, which will appear in each detail of our expression...something can be born, can appear, living and dying in a moment.”

Born out of the reconstruction of postwar Japan, the avant-garde dance form, Butoh, originated in the late 1950s. Concerned with exploring truth in the inner strata of the subconscious, Butoh’s raw art broke the traditional western dance ideals where youth and beauty were celebrated. This dance was a rebellion of the body, where freedom was cherished over beauty.

For Butoh pioneer, Tatsumi Hijikata (1928 – 1986), the expression of the inner soul and the exploration of taboos were paramount. His 1959 dance debut scandalized Tokyo. The performance, based on Yukio Mishima’s Forbidden Colours, involved a young boy mimicking sex with a chicken by strangling it between his thighs and then succumbing to the homosexual advances of Hijikata. The performance was outrageous—shocking to both audience members and the event organizers, the All Japan Artistic Dance Association. Hijikata ended up being banned by the association which labelled him a “dangerous dancer.”

Hijikata’s dance form became known as Ankoku Butoh, or “dance of darkness,” later shortened to Butoh, literally “dance step” or “stomp.” Used during the Meiji era to refer to western-style, ballroom dancing being introduced to Japan, the word Butoh actually harks back to ancient Japan when it was used as a name for ritualized dancing. The term had fallen into disuse when choreographer Hijikata resurrected it. This time Butoh was given a completely different, primordial meaning, denoting dance rooted to the earth. As Hijikata explained, “It is not grand jumps and leaps as in ballet…I would never jump or leave the ground; it is on the ground that I dance.”

In spite of its earth-bound roots, Butoh liberates within the confines of society while imposing extreme discipline on its dancers. Bent knees, bowed backs and turned-in feet are common characteristics, as well as white painted bodies, shaved heads and slow movements. Like any art straying from the mainstream, Butoh has received harsh criticism, with the dance said to have no aesthetic harmony and to employ a vocabulary of ugliness.

A better description of modern Butoh is an eclectic mixture of traditional Japanese dance and theatre, mime, ballet and European dance. Like modern dance, Butoh is abstract and improvisational, yet it differs significantly from other modern forms. Modern dance often deals with gender issues; Butoh tries to neutralize the body, focusing instead on the human spirit. Transformation is its essence. The dancers stop being themselves. Former Butoh dancer, Yoko Ashikawa, explains: “Hijikata choreographed dances for me that were based on puppets or babies. Looking back, I understand that this training was not designed to mimic puppets or babies, but to enable the dancers to really experience…their bodies like a baby through touching, feeling or exploring.”

The dance also awakens emotion. Barbara Bourget, Artistic Director for Kokoro Dance Company, says, “Butoh is trying to express the feelings that everyone has. It can be happiness; it can be sadness; it can be any depth of emotion that we feel as human beings. The importance is that it comes from the inside and not the outside.”

Just as Hijikata has been compared to the trunk of the tree with other dancers being the branches, Butoh has split into multiple forms and disciplines. Currently, there are Butoh groups in Japan, Europe and North and South America.

In Canada, Butoh is performed in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver, which has the Kokoro Dance Company, a post-Butoh dance company that performs a hybrid of Butoh and modern dance. The group was founded by Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi in 1986.

Their first encounter with Butoh was in 1980 when they watched a 15 minute performance by Tamano, a former student of Hijikata’s. Tamano metamorphosed from a plastic-swathed cocoon on the floor to an upright butterfly. The piece was timeless— encompassing silence and movement. For Jay and Barbara, the mesmerizing performance had a lasting influence.
Following the old master Hijikata, Vancouver’s Kokoro dancers use white body paint and a loincloth when performing. This use of white paint began when Hijikata’s wife, a ballerina, did not want to perform naked in front of an audience. Hijikata threw paint on her and said, “Now no one can recognize you.” Kokoro’s Barbara Bourget says that applying body paint before a performance has a ritual feeling: “It would be hard to perform without it. I would feel naked without it—even when wearing clothes.”

Butoh dancer, Kazuo Ohni, agrees, “The Butoh costume is like throwing the cosmos onto one’s shoulders. And for Butoh, while the costume covers the body, it is the body that is the costume of the soul.” n

photographs by Vincent Wong