BUTOH Tänzer

BUTOH Tänzer

GLIEDER - PUPPE


"BUTOH is a polymorphic body in a mysterious ceremony. Butoh insists over and over: let us get at the truth. Nothing else, nothing but the truth." -Kazuo Ohno "

"BUTOH belongs both to life and death.It is a realisation of the distance between a human being and the unknown.It also represents man's struggle to overcome the distance between himself and the material world. BUTOH dancers' bodies are like a cup filled to overflowing, one which cannot take one more drop of liquid – the body enters a state of perfect balance." --Ushio Amagatsu

Butoh is a dance form created in post-Hiroshima Japan as a rejection of both the assimilation of western ballet technique and the rigidity of classical Japanese Noh and Kabuki styles. The tortuous, incredibly controlled micro-movement of the butoh dancer is a sharp turn from the bravura technique of western dance. In watching, the audience becomes caught up in a still, dark place between action and reaction. The sense of passing time is lost, and each breathlessly unfolding moment becomes magnified through its incremental changes. Butoh is often a conflict of two spheres of energy. Sometimes it is abruptly violent while other times peaceful and calm. It can seem painfully intimate or grandly spectacular; it can be freely improvised or choreographed in stylized gestures. Often dancers' bodies are painted white, naked, and contorted, while other times dancers wear everyday clothes and no make-up.