Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Photos: S.Mitsos
“My dance is far removed from “Our bodily wounds eventually close
conventions and techniques…it is and heal. But there are always hidden
the unveiling of my inner life.” wounds, those of the heart, and if you
know how to accept and endure them,
“There are things which are not you will discover the pain and joy
apparent in our daily lives. This is which is impossible to express with
exactly what I want to show – those words. You will reach the realm of
aspects of our lives which are not poetry which only the body can
apparent to us.” express.”
TATSUMI HIJIKATA KAZUO OHNO
‘Notes by Tatsumi Hijikata’ In: Butoh: ‘Notes by Kazuo Ohno’ In: Butoh: Shades
Shades of Darkness p185 of Darkness p176
Butoh means not to move, but to ‘be moved’, not to dance, but to allow the
body to ‘be danced’. It requires the dancer to work in a more receptive,
responsive mode than other ‘technique-oriented’ dance. Butoh prioritises the
‘inner life’ or ‘soul’ of the movement above technique; it is more interested in
the experience of the dancer and the audience than in technical prowess for its
own sake. It does however require skill. The skill it values most highly is the
ability of the dancer to transform. Butoh often works in the area of the absurd,
or the grotesque, and might seek the double-edged image: the beautiful within
the ugly, the old within the young, dark within the light. Extremity is a feature
“Butoh is how you use your imagination, how you make your own journey
and how you discover it.”
Miyoko Urayama, Ensemble Dancer
After a decade of exploring Butoh, I took what I knew into a three-week dance
research project in London at The Place’s Choreodrome in September 2002. I
was joined by composer Keith Johnson, four soloists, and five ensemble
dancers.
Photos: G. Frusteri
How do we ‘prepare a dancer’ for Butoh-based work?
How do you work in a way that balances physical
virtuosity and imaginative virtuosity?
How do you train interiority?
What is this ‘within’ that we always refer to when
discussing Butoh?
The nature of the images used in Butoh varies greatly, depending on the
individual artist and the work being performed. Some might relate to
objectifying the body, seeing it as a rock, or a ‘wet rug’ or an animal - cat,
deer, snake. Others might be more related to embodying emotions or
characters, such as an old woman, or an intensive state of fear. Often they are
poetic, surreal or irrational which is significant in creating certain kinds of
I came to discover that perhaps the most important element that makes a
performance Butoh is the energy and conviction with which the dancer
performs…My realisation was that I was attempting an extreme level of
conviction towards the mental image that I wanted my body to
communicate. The energy and clarity of my image must allow the audience
to see something alive and real and not just movement!
Tamzin Hale, Soloist
To explore this area I was inspired by the idea of Hijikata’s ‘Butoh Fu’ - or
‘Butoh score’ - and the way Hijikata is reported to have used words to draw
movement from his dancers, to unlock something from within them.
I realised in my own way, I was also making choices about how I used words in
the choreographic process, and wanted to look more critically at that. I avoided
the use of Hijikata’s words at this stage and tried instead to find new ways of
working with my own words and encouraged the dancers to create their own
imagistic scores.
I created what I called ‘image streams’. For example:
With the focus shift to the ‘inner life’, Butoh can sometimes be seen as too
internal and inaccessible. Of course it is not enough for the dancer just to have
the images in mind. The question is how creatively they manifest that in the
body. Ultimately, Butoh is an engagement with an audience through the body,
as is all dance, and that strong ‘inner life’ must in the end be ‘manifested’ in the
body, energy, space and time, and it is important to interrogate the skill of the
dancer in manifesting images in the body, in form, energy, rhythm and space.
Throughout the project we acted as audience for each other to interrogate this
area between inner life and outer form in relation to the audience. Articulating
what we saw, without always knowing the intent of the dancer, we tried to
assess the relationship between the body and the image, and the level at which
the image was really manifested in the body in form and energy. We came to
At the outset I had articulated that Butoh allowed ‘space for the audience’. I
wanted to learn how I could better articulate what I meant by that. Butoh
works on a very poetic, visceral and emotional level with its audience. You can
experience something very directly from Butoh, though you might not be able
to clearly define it in words. In dialogue with my mentor, Lorna Marshall, I
came to differentiate between an audience’s ‘experience’ of a work, and their
‘interpretation’ of it. While I am responsible for guiding their experience, I
“It is the performers intention and purpose that makes dance ‘more than
movement’.”
Sondra Fraleigh “Family Resemblance” In: Researching Dance. p15
“The work made me think about emotions a lot. The work did not overtly
ask for expressing emotions, however it also did not refuse them”.
Stephanie Sachsenmaier
Photo: W. Omija
We worked on slow motion through two main forms; slow walking and slowly
rising and falling. In walking, oppositional force in the body was important to
maintaining energy. There are different ways of working with oppositional or
dynamic forces into the body. One is more ‘technical’ and the other ‘imagistic’.
The technical aspect I understand through Tadashi Suzuki’s idea of ‘energy’ and
‘brakes’, that forward motion requires a pulling backwards. The three rules that
inform his ‘Slow Ten’ exercise have also informed my work in slow walking in
Butoh. They are:
2) keep the centre moving constantly, not allowing it to stop with each step
Working in slow motion forces dancers to deal with transitions very fully, being
constantly aware of what is happening in the body in each moment of a
journey. Ideally, we should be just as attentive when working at faster speeds,
but of course this is even more demanding. Slow motion also allows time for
the audience to be more attentive to each moment of a movement.
Photo: G. Frusteri
We observed the constant trembling that goes on in the body when one
attempts to stand still. We observed how an arm’s shape tends to fall and
droop with gravity when held for long periods in stillness, requiring an upward
or opposition movement to be really still. Inner movement is required to
achieve stillness.
Physical tension in the body can block the energy channels and make stillness
seem dead, stiff or inanimate. Constant monitoring of the body’s state of
relaxation and openness is important to stillness, and so small changes are
required to maintain stillness. Our body makes small shifts constantly which we
need to monitor and readjust if we are to be physically still. And we must
constantly ‘breathe’ life into stillness, so outer stillness requires inner
movement to be truly alive.
“We can be still…If we could not we would not know movement…We know
things partly through contrast…”
Sondra Horton Fraleigh Researching Dance p4
The project highlighted for me the primacy and immediacy of stillness. With
training in dance, my body ultimately desired to fill in the gaps to create
Dancer
Photo: W. Omija
Our study of isolation explored head movement, arms, legs and face in
isolation. I became very interested in the isolation of head movements, simple
shifts of focus, combined with the slow motion walk forward. I used the rolling
rhythm of Arvo Part’s ‘Spiegel Im Spiegel’ music as well as silence and a low
hum to accompany these explorations. Isolating the head while the body was
still or walking in another rhythm began as a research question about isolation
but was very suggestive choreographically and conceptually. It connected the
bodies to the space through their gaze, which became more powerful because
Each dancer used some aspect of isolation in their solo as well. For example
Rachel Sweeney’s solo figure explored arms in isolation, giving them their own
life force.
It was Yumiko Yoshioka who first articulated to me the idea that isolation
required connection. While isolation suggests a feeling of disengagement or
cutting off, it also paradoxically requires a deepening of connections. You
I realised isolation can contribute to a sense of something being ‘done to’ the
dancer, happening to them rather than a result of their own conscious action,
and this is key in Butoh where the dancer should not so much MOVE by BE
MOVED. Is isolation a key to allowing the body to start speaking for itself? Can
isolation reveal invisible forces, seemingly separate from the dancer
themselves? The Butoh dancer needs to listen to the body and follow it, rather
than control and force it, following the thoughts of the body.
A very important part of this research was observing and understanding when
reduction, makes the movement stronger, revealing more, and when it merely
reduces and in fact weakens the impact. I have watched one dancer turn on the
spot in slow motion and been utterly bored, and watched another dancer doing
the same thing and been transfixed, because I could feel their energy, thoughts
and sensations flowing out of the body. The smallest details were magnified,
transitions were visible, and I could experience time in a completely different
way.
Keith was there from the outset seeing how dancers responded to the sparks I
gave and would then respond himself, adding either support or friction to what
they were doing. Barbara was irritated at first by the music he put to her solo
exploration, but the result of that friction was that she had to find her own
journey more strongly, and not rely on the music to work in obvious support of
her. We found that the pursuit of harmony was not always the most useful way,
and used this research project to acknowledge and work with discomfort and
what it could teach us about our preferences, expectations and habits.
In challenging the dancers with silence, I worked with the opening bars of Carl
Out of this came the idea of creating the sense of silence through the use of
sound. Keith composed ‘sound’ that functioned to create silence – like a low
hum, which was just enough to focus the ear away from the incidental sounds
of the building or the audience, but not enough to register as music or rhythm.
Keith also came up with a piece of music that was so full and loud and constant
that it bombarded the ears, exploring if this could have a similar effect to
silence, because the ear really couldn’t focus on individual sounds or motifs as
easily.
The dance was not created ‘in time’ with the music. The music was not
composed with specific beats or rhythm of movement in mind. The dancers
knew what ‘imaginative forces’ they were responding to, in what order, but the
duration of each movement phrase was determined by them in the moment of
“drink from the wells within their own bodies…drop a ladder deep into their own
bodies and climb down it.”
I wanted this challenge to inform my work, to engage with Butoh not on the
level of style or form, but in the spirit of Hijikata’s deep searching inside
ourselves for our own interest, our own dance, our obsessions.
I asked each dancer to think about the theme of the ‘figure in the landscape’,
bringing their own thoughts, memories and fantasies into the project. They
were given questions prior to the research project, and asked to bring images
and pictures with them. The questions they were given were designed to have a
physical answer, an answer that could be given with the body. From their
‘answers’ we started to generate solo material, and to create their ‘figures’. For
example:
The research outcomes of this project were five ‘sketches for solos’ and two
group pieces.
Finding new working methods and challenging your established process is not
easy. The artist/practitioner engaged in research benefits from the research
structure enormously. That is, being forced to articulate questions, define a
method and avoid assuming or pre-determining the results. They are also
encouraged to articulate to themselves using spoken and written words. The
research working in the area of somatic experience must face the challenge of
articulating what is very difficult to put into words. Can words be used to
describe what went on inside the bodies, between our bodies, and within our
consciousness in such a project? Respect for the complexity of experience tells
Barbe, Frances. “Catching a Glimpse of Something Vast: Training for Butoh and
Butoh as a Training” Total Theatre Vol 15 Issue 1 Spring 2003
Fraleigh, Sondra Horton. Dancing Into darkness: Butoh, Zen and Japan Uni of
Pittsburgh Press, 1999
Roquet, Paul. “Towards the Bowels of the Earth: Butoh Writhing in Perspective”
available for download from www.butoh.net April 2003
Nanako, Kurihara. “Hijikata Tatsumi: The Words of Butoh” The Drama Review
Vol. 44.i Spring 2000
The Drama Review 44.i Spring (contains a number of articles on Butoh and
by Hijikata) 2000
VIDEO
Michael Blackwood Productions, Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis 1990
(available via the internet)
CD ROM
Waguri, Yukio. Butoh Kaden. Butoh Fu. Kohzensha /Justsystem 1998