This is a short excerpt from the documentary the library doesn't carry, called Butoh: Body on the Edge of a Crisis. Some of it repeats what Tiffany was saying today in her presentation, but it includes some other images, as well.
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This clip caused me to think of the fascination that we often have with things that revolt or disturb us. The human reaction that we often see on highways were everyone stares at an accident. That sense of not being able to look away at something that is ugly or painful.
In watching this clip I thought of this fascination. The contradiction of not wanting to look at it but not being able to look away from it.
Within the description of the pieces, I thought it was interesting that they said that he recieved his inspirations from all over the world, and from many sources - and then later on said how he rejected anything that wasn't Japanese.
And this contradiction seems to show up even in the last piece they describe in that he makes fun of western ideas. But he includes them in the piece even in poking fun. Again a sense that the things that disturb us are also the things we can't get away from.
I am reminded of a teacher I had in high school in who said that to find out what you want to do, think about the things you hate and work against them.
And in a sense that seems to be happening in these dance forms. Would this dance form be present without the hate for all things western?
I have a picture of the ying and yang symbol - that the white and the black are both there - and in each one there is a spot of the opposite. There can never be one without the other.
It seems that great art often comes as a response to pain and I wonder if the risks would be taken in this dance form if the pain wasn't there.
O, I'm so happy to see a clip of this film! Seeing Butoh even briefly makes it worlds clearer than any amount of describing. I loved seeing clips of the actual "Revolt of the Flesh" performance because the title came up often in my research. Something interesting to remember is that "Revolt..." involved a lot of mocking of Western culture AND it allegedly was the last time he used any Western influence in his work.
I was also struck by how the dance was very much in line with Artaud's concept of theatre of cruelty and how shocking/disturbing simple movements of the body can be. Isn't it strange that we can be revulsed merely by the way he manipulates his body into twisted shapes or spasms? They almost seem to me to be symbolic of the disgust felt and it reminded me how stylized some of the acting/gestures are in Japanese theater, like the "crying" gesture in Kabuki. Did they actually kill a rooster at the end of it or was it just an act?
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