“If there is love in your soul, your body will present it.” This is one of the many things that stuck out to me while watching the Butoh film. The work that was displayed was alarming, graphic, alluring, poignant, and dark. I can’t imagine the rehearsal and struggle that must be done to grasp this art. The dedication the dancers showed was amazing and scary at the same time.
I do wonder how much of this work is improvisation and how much is it based on set moves? Sometimes the work is so fluid it seems set, yet when a group is performing together you can see individuals at different paces and heights. They speak of choreographers throughout, but it feels so improvisational.
This art form seems very communal and cultish to me, not judging, just pointing out that many of the groups that perform Butoh seem to live together in small, tight quarters. One point in the film the women mention they all go by the same name, Ashi kahva (I think), so no one person is better or above another. Those who do this work seem extremely dedicated, yet not all of them are trained dancers. There was one dancer who was an actual painter that Hijikata preferred to work with.
If this is a communal art form can we then say all theatre globally is communal to some extent? The Yoruba dance in the streets bringing it to the community, with some joining in for the pure delight of it. I’ve even been to musicals where the audience has sung along with the cast. If this is not communal, what is?
I can see how this form of dance generated a negative backlash when introduced after the war. With the stiff non-fluid, nontraditional movements and dark internal thoughts, many were not receptive to this new form. I can see some basic movements from Kabuki and Noh theatres. The use of all body paint and no clothes is I’m sure a huge blow to the traditionalist. I think it adds to the bleak and darkness of the work. In particular, I liked the piece in which four men are completely covered in full white body paint except for their fingers, which were painted red, and they were holding a large mirror which was reflecting a man dancing in it. However, that man was fully clothed and if memory serves was also wearing jewelry. So what does this say? In one way I see how we work our fingers bloody for merely materialistic purposes and the use of the mirror is to show us we don’t see it unless it is forced upon us.
As an actor I can see how the dedication and use of this form of dance could heighten my work. Having a better understanding of one’s body can only benefit one’s work. We in the west do not train as long or as hard as many eastern cultures but does that mean our work is less successful? As was stated early on in the film “Everyone has 50% darkness in them.” I truly believe to really understand and embrace this form of movement you need to accept that 50% of darkness.
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I, also, was struck by the Butoh group which chose to live and create together every minute of every day of every month…. I did that once with a group of musicians. Out a band of nine players there was a core of about four or five of us who all pooled money and lived and worked together nearly every minute of every day. It can be a surrealistic and euphoric existence. But, you have to be content with perpetual poverty or set a deadline for when “making a living” at your art is more than a hope. We were trying to create some at least a little commercially appealing, so I chose a deadline. When you’re trying to create an entirely new approach to the discipline I can only imagine how one’s actual perception of the world alters. I don’t know if I could live like that now—with or without a family. If I work with a group I prefer people who have their own lives and experiences and then bring that to the creative table.
Ruminating over that bit of Butoh we watched helps me to discern more of how I conceive theatre. As a western-trained theatre artist, I think in terms of holding a mirror up to society. Butoh (and, perhaps, dance as an art form) holds its mirror to more intangible things and broader concepts like human nature or love and "darkness". Perhaps a “global” theatre is a theatre where those broader concepts can be explored through an aesthetic and a vocabulary of theatre.
Sometimes I think we are more similar to the Butoh "living camps" than we think. We do eat together, work together, and study together. My longer days are filled with fifteen hours of my MFA classmates. The only differences is we don't live together. But really, we might as well, considering I usually feel like I am only paying rent to have a place to sleep! I think MFA students, especially theatre students, have to have a special bond. Only other theatre artists have truly understood how much time I will put into a production.
I do wonder if they ever get sick of each other, though. I think they must. No matter how much dedication there is to an art, when you live with twenty people who share the same name, things must get tense every once in a while. But perhaps that is part of the Butoh process.
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