Asian Arts & Culture Program presents Butoh artist Akira Kasai in concert on October 1, 2004

If you have not experienced a Butoh performance before, here are some ideas that constellate around the notion of Butoh and its emergence as an art form that may help.

What is Butoh?

“A polymorphic body in a mysterious ceremony”

“Like religion, the definition and form of Butoh remains in constant flux”

Butoh remains undefined in its core form. In its essential structure and notion it poses the contradiction to destroy and resurrect oneself, in the process becoming a “catalyst” for deconstruction of all values, including deconstructing oneself. Bodies contorted and twisted, grotesques faces, cross-eyed grimaces, eyes nearly popping of the head, Butoh appears as a ritual more than the accepted notion of dance from a western point of view. One can explain Butoh in this way: The dancer conceives an inner image and the movement come as impulses created by that image rather than conscious choices of the dancer, making it spontaneous, reactive and improvisational. The viewer is not aware of this internal image and understands the Butoh actions according to his or her own experiences or awareness. Min Tanaka’s declaration, “I do not dance in the space: I dance the space” suggests a renouncing of ego and self. Akira Kasai rejects the objectification of the body and holds to manifesting a conscious spirit in his dance. Another element to understand about Butoh is the rejection of traditional value judgements with regards to art.“ Do not try to be good”, said the premier Butoh artist Kazuo Ohno. This is a confounding idea for the audience especially for the critics as the values they look for to judge the work is not the values the artists strive for.

History

In response to the dominance of existing European dance forms, a highly stylized and codified ancient tradition of Japanese movement and the “ forced westernization” of Japan after World War II, a heretical group of dancers in Japan began to incorporate the movements of Noh, Kabuki and Bunraku into a “guerilla art form”. In the 1950s Tatsumi Hijikata was one of the original pioneers of Ankoku Butoh (darkness dance). Growing up in the cold and rural climate of Northern Japan, he used ideas of nature and the daily movements of ordinary working people around him to fuel his images such as attempting to spring from the earth, to appear weightless like a leaf or a bird, smearing the naked body with dirt or ashes. His life experiences were pragmatic and this dance represented a real presence on the stage. Another source of influence for him were the historical memories and traditions of Japanese culture that became imprinted in his pieces as images old women’s bodies deformed by hard labor, characters drawn from mythology of ghosts, violence, sexual perversion etc. In 1959 at the Tokyo dance festival, Hijikata provoked a major scandal with his presentation of “kinjiki” (Forbidden Colors), an adaptation of the novel by the same name by Yukio Mishima in which he proceeded to have sex with a chicken. Tatsumi Hijikata developed a new body language for Butoh, one that resonated strongly with nature and truthfulness of one’s experience and reactions to the surroundings.

“Thunderclaps announced the initial tableau of Akira Kasai’s Pollen Revolution” writes New York critic, Chris Dohse in his review of the show. Kasai stands with his back to the audience in a startling red kimono with the white face make-up and a black wig of a Geisha making small, precise and elegant gestures and steps typical of a Kabuki dance, these begin to turn into frenzy and agitation in his body and one can see that this is a hybrid of sorts. What is Akira’s inner image that is resonating these movements remains unclear- is it a respect or reverence for the tradition or scorn? What is clear is that Akira’s energetic style is very different from the enervatingly slow, shocking presentations by Eiko and Koma, Sankai Juku, Min Tanaka we have come to experience and consider as Butoh in America. Mr. Kasai studied with the Butoh pioneers Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, however Chris Dohse remarks that Kasai’s work seems to “owe more to the aleatoric creations of Steve Paxton or Simone Forti” as his taut fluid body moves relentlessly with sudden falls, leaps, grimaces and spontaneous monologues in Japanese, English and German. Now, in his sixties, Akira Kasai is an event unto himself.

Akira’s athletic body that performs balletic style movements has had the critics comparing him to the great Nijinsky. Presenting any sembleance of a dance style is not the motivator for Akira’s dance. His concept’s are much more internalized; “change the negation process of Butoh into one of affirmation”, “to change the Dionysian forces of destruction into Appolonian energies of creation” etc. His advice to emerging dancers is, “have absolute freedom and the right use of tradition…the body is the nexus, a locus point for the union of all things…(in which) you can unite all different concepts. That’s the life-power of dance”.

Sources: The Nijinsky of Butoh, Yafonne; Flash review by Chris Dohse; Collapsing Silence, Indra Lowenstein & Terrance Graven.