Butoh Changed Everything.

Butoh Changed Everything, a short narrated Butoh dance film by Mary Power.

My short version of the definition of Butoh dance goes like this. Its not European. It’s straight out of Japan. The tumult of post World War II and early 1960’s set the backdrop for the founders of Japanese Butoh. Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazou Ohno, created an array of internal techniques from the macabre to the sublime. Ohno, movement magnetically drawn out by a flower dreaming, becoming the dream, becoming the flower. Hijikata, the act of decomposing in extreme environments.  Shifting human centric views one way or another, encompassing impermanence and the absorption of the void, the fullness of emptiness, light in the dark.

 

My long version is different. However, so much more has been written by those who consider themselves experts on the matter, and by those who have worked directly with the founders. 

So, my personal experience defines my Butoh experience. Akira Kasai forged and deeply influenced my experience as a teacher and a performer of Butoh. Kasai, from Japan, danced with both Hijikata and Ohno. In his classes Akira Kasai taught the experience of Butoh. In his performances, he taught me to see. The last time I saw him in San Francisco, I gave him an impractical gift, a heavy star molded out of clear glass, a vessel filled with popcorn kernels, sealed with a waxed cork.

 

For me, studying with international Butoh teachers watered the Butoh seeds planted by Kasai, teachers like Katsura Kan from Thailand, Gustavo Collini Sartor from Argentina, Diego Piñon from Mexico. These teachers were part of the global Butoh Festival launched in 1998 by Takami Craddock and Brechin Flourney. Many thanks to them. It grew annually, for a while.

 

Butoh changed everything.