Defy Description
“In ancient cultures, dance was a form of prayer.”
—Atsushi Takanuchi
A contemporary, avant-garde performance art, butoh is a seamless blend of dance, theater, improvisation, and traditional Japanese performing arts. Butoh compels both performers and audience to investigate the primal, universal energies that connect us, and invites us to share an embodied experience of the collective unconscious.
The “Ankoku” spirit of butoh originated with its co-founder Hijikata Tatsumi who is often described as not only a consummate artist but also a person with the bearing of an ancient shaman. Dancer and Hijikata disciple, Natsu Nakajima, translates “ankoku” as “spirituality” and describes his experience in butoh as “using the field of the body to go on a spiritual journey”.
Nakajima’s experience mirrors my own. My deep attachment to butoh is an outgrowth of my journey along a spiritual path which defies the dualistic paradigms that define Western thought. Butoh invites us to become empty vessels; allows us to explore different states of being; to meditate on the spaces between mind/body/soul as well as their inextricable connections.
karma extinction
This compelling butoh performance explores environmental crisis and social division as calls to action reflecting on the Buddhist concept of karma in which human thoughts and actions ripple across time.
Karma extinction is movement as emergent, expansive consciousness that contradicts the binary, zero-sum equation of rationality in favor of a holistic reality that acknowledges the wisdom of our ancient ancestors and thus liberates us.
Music: Exurgency by Zoe Keating
Spoken Word by Araceli Montano & Bleu Moon
Joie
Seattle International Dance Festival:
Art on the Fly
Directed by Helen Thorsen
TRANCEfigurations
A meditative butoh experience presented by Funhouse Movement Theater at Yume Japanese Garden in Tucson, AZ; directed by Lin Lucas and featuring: Sherry Mulholland, Margaret Evans, Sabrina Geoffrion, Karenne Koo, and Keita Tsutsumi.
The performance included original poetry by Araceli Montaño, Taylor Johnson, and Angelique Matus and a musical soundscape by Calm Whale.
Visitors to this unique performance encountered dancers dispersed throughout the refined splendor of the Japanese garden, each engaged in improvisational communion with the sights, sounds, and sensations of the natural environment.
Videography by Peter Fuhrman, Media Production.