Years ago, a former editor at The Stranger and I had an idea for an online video series called “Butoh Attack!” Here’s the concept: Start with an everyday urban situation in which you really wish somebody would just hurry up already. A grocery clerk dragging ass at the cash register, say, or a person glacially exiting an elevator, or someone blocking a narrow road while trying to parallel park. Then, a few seconds later, a bolt of lightning zaps down—”Butoh attack!”—and the offending slowpoke would be transformed into a Butoh dancer: nearly naked, in white body paint, moving slower than a slug. Hee-haw.
We abandoned the idea because we had it during the early 2000s and the joke already seemed old: The Butoh fad, we finally admitted to ourselves, was so 1996.
If you have no idea what I’m talking about, here’s your three-minute synopsis: Butoh is a very specific mode of modern dance that emerged in post-WWII Japan, mostly as a response to (a) the bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and (b) the way most Japanese dance at the time was derivative of either Noh or Western styles. The idea was to find a new, autochthonous form—specific to the Japanese body and its lower center of gravity—that would reject the aesthetics of the imperialist West and the old Shinto-influenced Japanese fascism toppled by WWII. The first Butoh performance was infamous and involved founding fathers Tatsumi Hijikata, Kazuo Ohno, and his son Yoshito Ohno. It ended with Yoshito holding a live chicken between his legs and being chased offstage by Hijikata. People freaked out, thinking Yoshito had strangled the chicken between his thighs as some kind of comment on “perverse” sexuality. Butoh’s clichés include ashen body paint, slow motion, gaping maws in grotesque silent screams, and an obsession with darkness and decay. Some Euro-American dance thinkers fell in love with this unusual aesthetic. Consequently, Butoh is believed to be far more popular in Euro-America than in Japan. Nobody has done rigorous research on the subject (that I know of), but that’s the general consensus—and it’s supported by my (admittedly tiny and insignificant) experience of living in Japan, where nobody, not even the artists, seemed to give a shit about Butoh.
I have never seriously covered Butoh in the theater section of The Stranger because the form and its narrow aesthetic always seemed like a dead end. Butoh people are like whirling dervishes: devotees of a spiritual practice/lifestyle with a performance component that may look exotic to Euro-American eyes, but which has an extremely limited expressive vocabulary. Butoh choreography is a little like the Marquis de Sade: shocking at first, but soon repetitive. You only have to read de Sade’s Justine once to get the idea. As a text, it’s not that rich. You don’t need to go back and reread it.
But people continue to practice Butoh—and continue to complain that The Stranger doesn’t give Butoh the attention it deserves. Well, this week brings Seattle Butoh Festival 2011 and seems as good a time as any to address a persistent art form (or fad, if you’re not feeling so generous) that lost its juice over a decade ago.
“I don’t think any art form can be totally exhausted,” Lane Czaplinski, the artistic director of On the Boards, argues when I ask him to criticize my anti-Butoh prejudice. “But I think you’re responding to people who are committed to mining that Butoh form, but are training themselves in such a way that they can’t have much of a dialogue with the form.”
So Butoh’s problem is that its devotees can’t innovate? They’re just retreading the same ground?
“It’s like listening to bad jazz,” Czaplinski says. “The musicians are not necessarily repeating Miles Davis. You could hear bad jazz and say, ‘Well, jazz has been exhausted.’ But you can’t claim that jazz was exhausted in the way that Miles Davis played it.”
True.
Both Czaplinski and DK Pan—Pan studied and performed Butoh for six years in his 20s and still considers it a major influence on his artistic work—point out that there’s no denying the mystifying power of the old Butoh dancers. Some held “impossible poses” for hours and hours, some ran 17 miles just to warm up for a show, and some lived extraordinarily austere lives in the service of a dance/philosophy that was described by its originators in koans such as Butoh is the vein on a dog’s leg or Butoh is the dead body trying to stand up.
Unfortunately, these puzzles and physical achievements can seem a little precious to the nondevotee. If you don’t “get” Butoh (or even, in some circumstances, if you simply try to interrogate Butoh), you can find yourself accused of being uptight and benighted—just another fool who hasn’t spent enough time pondering the one-handed clap. And practitioners of an art form that cannot sustain questioning without reverting to religious indignation are just another pack of believers who share a faith that you don’t.
When Pan first encountered Butoh in his early 20s, he didn’t like it. “It seemed too goth,” he says. About a year later, he saw a Butoh performance at On the Boards that completely changed his mind.
“Sometimes I equate it with punk,” Pan says. “It’s more about the spirit and the attitude than the form. With the early Butoh, visual artists were making these incredible posters, there was street theater and political protest, lots of spectacle. Whenever I talk about Butoh, it’s always full of contradictions. You have huge spectacles with lots of props on one side and then the solo dancer, very minimal, dancing in a cave on the other.”
Here’s another contradiction: Why are so many Butoh devotees traditionalists in a form that was founded on iconoclasm? Why does so much Butoh still look the same? Akira Kasai (one of the weirder, more experimental Butoh practitioners) quit Butoh at one point in his career and then returned to it, saying: “There is no Butoh, only Butoh dancers.”
“See, you can’t codify it,” Pan says after telling me this story, sounding half-admiring and half-exasperated with the whole concept. “There’s a lot to it—it can be really interesting and good, but like improvisational music, it can also veer toward a lot of noodling.”
Performance companies across the world borrow from the Butoh vocabulary—including Stranger Genius Award winners Implied Violence, who sometimes employ pallid complexions, gaping maws, and slow motion—but the more seriously a company takes its Butoh, the more they look like they’re noodling. Which is fine for them. People should be allowed to play bad jazz—but we don’t have to love it.
“Still, there’s one thing about Butoh that you just can’t discount,” Czaplinski says. “It’s never been more important to move slowly. Butoh goes into a different time signature than modern life allows.” 
Sounds like a load of one-handed clapping.
every time i see or hear the word butoh i’m transported back to this impossibly blue afternoon in pioneer square in 1985.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DysQiQG0_…
after 25 years i think i am finally ready to re-visit this art
Brendan,
thanks for acknowledging your biases and trying (if not succeeding) to present the alternative viewpoint. it’s a niche art form. i’d argue that Butoh is ignored in Japan exactly the same way Earth (and O’Malley and Anderson) was ignored in Seattle until O’Malley and Anderson moved to LA.
Also, it’s probably worth noting that Butoh experienced one of it’s most poignant moments in Seattle, when a performer in Sankai Juku fell to his death while suspended from a building in Pioneer Square by a rope in 1985.
thanks for the coverage.
Dated a girl years ago that was huge into Butoh. Some of the stuff I found interesting, but I can definitely see what Brenden’s talking about.
During that span I saw good Butoh and bad Butoh. Good stuff is ponderous and sometimes disturbing. It somehow (not sure how) managed to key into some great primal imagery.
The bad stuff balances its pretension with equal amounts of tedium. You keep checking your watch, waiting for the ashy person on stage to shuffle their drooling ass to exit stage right.
I guess, for me, Butoh as an ingredient is interesting because I discovered it “backwards,” through the spectral presences in J-horror classics like Ju-On; its slow, creeping movement reminds me of the sludgy metal of the Melvins, Earth, Sunn O))), and Boris. So in a way, I’ve always seen Butoh through a pop-art lense, rather than an art-school lense (though J-horror and doom metal could be called the sort of pop-art that art-school grads like).
The comparison to jazz is interesting, because I find jazz fairly dead–not because I don’t like to listen to it (I do), but because most of the “pure” jazz I like is archival; and where it’s not archival, it’s not pure–it’s been blended with other elements (rock, hip-hop, neoclassical, industrial, noise, etc.). Even a player of Davis’s stature would have a hard time convincing me that the “pure” stuff no longer expresses anything that needs expression.
And if I turn my gaze to “pure” anything, I don’t find myself much more forgiving: puppets, opera, dance, even “drama” itself (people on a stage talking to each other? really? that’s ALL?!) feels, once the shock of the new (if, indeed, you ever felt it) has worn off, like a step towards something more complete.
On the other hand, it’s hard to fault a group like, say, Degenerate Art Ensemble, who use Butoh as an ingredient in a heady performance curry that includes puppetry, metal, opera, and acrobatics.
The question in my mind is this: Is there any way to preserve these “ingredients” for such a curry if there’s no one actively cultivating the pure stuff? Can you make sourdough without starter? Does a Southern-style Thai curry not require that someone is out there cultivating Japanese chilies?
Brilliant.
I used to be a dancer, and I’ve been to just about every form of dance performance large and small, amateur and professional, in the course of my life. And the only one I’ve ever desperately wanted to walk out on was a professional Butoh performance at McCaw Hall. God awful.
@2: For the more sensitive souls among us, it’s worth noting that Riz’s link is to a video of a man falling to his death. Had I, at least, known that, I wouldn’t have clicked on it.
Carry on.
@8 ..sorry..
@9
Thank you for the apology. Some of us were present in Pioneer Square at that performance.
And, Mr. Kiley–to each their own–but while undergoing some theatre training and also performing in Japan, few events–this time as a member of the audience–were as personally affecting as an early morning Butoh performance one August 6th.
There are essentially only two types of Butoh performance: riveting and unbearable. The unbearable variety is far more common. Good Butoh, however, can be astonishing. Sankai Juku (pictured above) is consistently riveting. Butoh isn’t for everyone and the quality is uneven, but when it’s good, it’s amazing (Hibiki, their program in SF this tour, moved me to tears twice both nights I saw it).
@9…I was also there.
I also wanted to note that “Butoh Attack!” sounds brilliant, and illustrates how the form could be used to interesting effect. Imagine it’s a slow, deliberate form of precision clowning, rather than dance, and place it in the sort of contexts where that makes sense, and you have a whole ‘nother form. It’s not “pure,” of course, but even that seems to be in keeping with the spirit.
I am a butoh dancer, among other styles. We must engage with our critics in order to grow and develop. Also, I think people’s intuition is not so weak. If they are bored senseless by a performance, it is not their fault. I am presenting a work saturday night at Velocity which attempts to stretch the form as well as cannabilize other styles into a cohesive structure. I also have wanted to walk out of many butoh performances. My intention with this work was to make one you can’t take your eyes away from.
I am a butoh dancer and choreographer. We must engage with our critics if we are to develop. If people our bored senseless by our performance that is not their fault or lack of training. I’m presenting a work saturday night at Velocity which attempts to stretch the form while cannabilizing other styles. I have also wanted to walk out of many butoh performances. My intention with this dance was to create one you could’t take your eyes away from.
Any form of theatre needs defined characters and a defined narrative/plot. To me Butoh, like modern dance and assorted forms, is a beautiful art that too often lacks the needed focus of character and narrative to consistently hook us theatrically. You need more than beautiful technique and form.
Brendan,
I appreciate your critique but I would encourage you to give Butoh another chance. I agree with several of these comments that just like in all performance improvisation, you have to sit through a lot of bad to get to something really good. I have seen very few butoh performances that totally rocked me, but the ones I have were well worth it. Carlotta Ikeda managed to make me feel like I was onstage with her, in some sort of space vacuum. She simply raised her arms and walked forward, but it was as if she had parted the Red Sea and I stood in between the waves with her. I actually felt the pressure and the suction. For me, this is the transformative power of butoh – to move the audience into another space-time, separate from our everyday reality. It is not easy to do. But when it happens it’s amazing!
In the beginning of his work, Hijikata was not trying working on an idea of the “Japanese body,” whatever that is… He was aiming to make something akin to what Duchamp’s toilet did for visual art, radically altering the terms of dance. Manipulating time was one way to do that, as was exploring the grotesque, sexuality, and generally accepted notions of beauty and worth. He wanted people to become unstuck from their love affair with modernity and wake up to the full experience of being human. Some of these critiques are still valid, though the terms have changed (and so should the expression, in my opinion). Later in his life he went back to his roots in Northern Japan to investigate how his “hometown landscape” affected his body and his ideas of movement and dance. This is where the bowlegged stance comes from, and the gnarled limbs and faces. BUT, it’s very important to note that Hijikata never developed a dance grammar. There is not butoh first position. His METHOD is first and foremost about erasing the self, transcending the ego, and transforming into something else entirely – either another character or just an atmospheric substance – but to push the body beyond the confines of what we think it is. The white paint is a frequent first stage of erasing the self, at least that’s the intention, but not all butoh performers use the white paint. Furthermore, Hijikata encouraged his students to develop their own art. He did not ask for slavish imitation. Nor did Kazuo Ohno, for that matter. Your critique of this is apt, but I wouldn’t write off Butoh altogether. Instead, I invite you to be part of the education process in your role as critic.
There are countless performers and students who are inspired by Butoh’s rebellious aesthetic. Maybe they haven’t digested it fully and are simply copying someone else’s form, but they are searching for something, and it is primarily through imitation that we learn. 1. Give them a chance, and 2. Encourage them to find their own voice.
I hope to see you at some of the events this coming weekend.
Brenden,
Thank you for opening the door to this long-overdue conversation at a very timely moment — The Next WAVE Seattle Butoh Festival starts TODAY, FRIDAY JUNE 3, beginning at the Frye Art Museum with a historical context forum from 11a.m. – 1p.m. There, anyone who attends will discover the stereotyped version of butoh’s history referenced in your article is just the tip of the iceberg, that the “Hiroshima dance” encapsulation is so limited in its perspective it becomes absolutely wrong. Recently (May 20 – 22) the first academic butoh symposium was held at UCLA, largely in response to similar clouded perception from early critics. Professsor William Marotti put butoh in the broader historical context in which it did- and does – exist. Michael Sakamoto, one of DAIPANbutoh Collective’s invited guests for our festival and phD candidate at UCLA, a butoh artist himself and one of the organizers of that symposium, expresses some of this much-researched and practiced present-day awareness in the excellent article Roxanne Ray of the International Examiner. Read it:
http://www.iexaminer.org/arts/wave-butoh…
Also, I invite you to attend the two completely different Friday and Saturday night mainstage performances at Velocity Dance Center at 7:30pm tonight and tomorrow (we’re comping you). Hiroko and Koichi Tamano, the butoh masters who brought butoh to the U.S. in the 70’s (one of last chances to see them before they move back to Japan in the fall), will be performing along with local pioneers Joan Laage and Helen Thorsen as well as Alan Sutherland, Diana Garcia -Snyder & myself. Saturday night Michael Sakamoto of L.A., Tanya Calamoneri of NYC, as well as Danse Perdue’s and Douglas Riding’s choreography and dance will speak much louder to the expansive, living, relevant, differently-accessible nature of this art form than any thousand more words could do.
Still, words, dialogue is important- critical to the continual development of art. So do come if you can to our show(s). You might just find yourself digging further into the Zen/Spirituality/Philosophy aspect of this form at our second forum at Seattle U Sunday June 5 afternoon 4 – 6pm, the Contemporary Cross-Currents of Butoh Forum at Raisbeck Hall/Cornish College of the Arts Thurs. June 9 from 7 -9pm, and/or quazi flash-mobbing it with your broader community at Whole Foods Steps 2:15 – 3 “Dance d’etre Joie” and then S. Lake Union Park Saturday June 11 from 3-6 pm in the Katatonic Zen Garden: Heaven’s Mirror…
Thanks,
Sheri Brown
Artistic Director of DAIPANbutoh
http://www.daipanbutoh.com
http://www.sheribrown.com
p.s. as a side but relevant note: over 30 local businesses have generously donated gifts and/or services to for our event’s raffle/silent auction – chances to win (on multiple levels) are very high – pending participation
[quote]Nobody has done rigorous research on the subject (that I know of)[/quote]
Brendan: Yeah this blanket statement kind of gave you away. Please, read, before you peddle stereotypes.
@19 Why do you assume that he didn’t? An off-hand ass-covering like that doesn’t mean he didn’t do any work at all, just that he perhaps does not subscribe to the one obscure academic art journal which published research on butoh.
*sigh* I regret posting @19, even after multiple edits. Disclaimer: I’m not part of the Seattle arts scene, don’t take my comment as representative of artists, but only as my personal gripe about journalists.
@20 I wouldn’t call TDR an obscure journal, among many other journals and books and conferences etc. Again, this is not representative of anyone except my own, non-Seattle view and experiences.
I was there in Pioneer Square too. I was six years old. My mother had taken my nine-year-old sister and I down to see the performance. She’s a teacher and we were always going to see weird art and cultural experiences. I watched him fall, but my mom pushed my sister and I down to the ground so we wouldn’t see him hit.
I was, understandably, completely traumatized and actually mostly repressed the memory until a few years ago, while I was watching some circus performers hang from sheets outside a hotel. I suddenly remembered and dry heaved a little with the force of the memory.
In any case, I don’t think I could ever watch Butoh again, no matter how interesting or non-interesting it may be.
Butoh lacks good looking girls with long hair.
Why are we hating on self-expression? Not everyone’s going to “get it” – just keep dancing anyway.