Butoh
The art form is known to "resist fixity"[1] and is difficult to define; notably, founder Hijikata Tatsumi viewed the formalisation of butoh with "distress".
[2] Common features of the art form include playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, and extreme or absurd environments.
Butoh first appeared in post-World War II Japan in 1959, under the collaboration of Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, "in the protective shadow of the 1950s and 1960s avant-garde".
[3] A key impetus of the art form was a reaction against the Japanese dance scene then, which Hijikata felt was overly based on imitating the West and following traditional styles like Noh.
Thus, he sought to "turn away from the Western styles of dance, ballet and modern",[2] and to create a new aesthetic that embraced the "squat, earthbound physique... and the natural movements of the common folk".
The term means "dance of darkness", and the form was built on a vocabulary of "crude physical gestures and uncouth habits... a direct assault on the refinement (miyabi) and understatement (shibui) so valued in Japanese aesthetics.
He also developed a poetic and surreal choreographic language, butoh-fu (舞踏譜, fu means "notation" in Japanese), to help the dancer transform into other states of being.
Students of each style went on to create different groups such as Sankai Juku, a Japanese dance troupe well known to fans in North America.
Starting in the early 1980s, butoh experienced a renaissance as butoh groups began performing outside Japan for the first time; at this time the style was marked by "full body paint (white or dark or gold), near or complete nudity, shaved heads, grotesque costumes, clawed hands, rolled-up eyes and mouths opened in silent screams.
When a completely new student arrived for a workshop in 1989 and found a chaotic simultaneous photo shoot, dress rehearsal for a performance at Berkeley's Zellerbach Hall, workshop, costume making session, lunch, chat, and newspaper interview, all "choreographed" into one event by Tamano, she ordered the student, in broken English, "Do interview."
Butoh Fu can be described as a series of cues largely based on incorporating visualizations that directly affect the nervous system, producing qualities of movement that are then used to construct the form and expression of the dance.
Teachers of this style include Yukio Waguri, Yumiko Yoshioka, Minako Seki and Koichi and Hiroko Tamano, founders of Harupin-Ha Butoh Dance Company.
She established and organised Butoh in the UK[25] since 1994 and was the first European artist to receive notable funding support for her pioneering work informed by Butoh into mainstream dance organisations in UK including the Royal Opera House, The Place Theatre and Royal National Theatre (she was choreographer and chorus performer for 'Bacchai' for Sir Peter Hall).
[28] LEIMAY (Brooklyn) emerged 1996-2005 from the creative work of Shige Moriya, Ximena Garnica, Juan Merchan, and Zachary Model at the space known as CAVE.
Eseohe Arhebamen, a princess of the Kingdom of Ugu and royal descendant of the Benin Empire, is the first indigenous and native-born African butoh performer.
[31][32] COLLAPSINGsilence Performance Troupe (San Francisco) was established and co-founded by Indra Lowenstein and Terrance Graven in 1992 and was active until 2001.
They designed all of their costumes, props, puppets, and site-specific installations, while collaborating with live musicians such as Sharkbait, Hollow Earth, Haunted by Waters, and Mandible Chatter.
), Stanford University, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, the beginning years at Burning Man, and various other venues creating multi-media dance performances.
Performing throughout the United States, Flesh & Blood Mystery Theater was a regular participant in the San Francisco Butoh Festival of which DeNatale was an Associate Producer.
In Bust A Groove 2, a video game released for the PlayStation in 2000, the dance moves of the hidden boss character Pander are based on Butoh.
The influence of Butoh has also been felt heavily in the J-Horror movie genre, forming the basis for the appearance of the ghosts in seminal 2002 film Ju-on: The Grudge.
[41] The 2008 Doris Dörrie film Cherry Blossoms features a Bavarian widower on a journey to Japan to grieve for his wife and develops an understanding of Butoh style performance.
Richard Armitage cited the dance form as an inspiration for his animalistic portrayal of the villain Francis Dolarhyde (the "Red Dragon") in the third season of Hannibal.
[citation needed] Taiwanese-American performer Nymphia Wind created an outfit inspired by Butoh for the Dancing Queen runway on the season 16 "Snatch Game" episode of RuPaul's Drag Race (2024).
