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Butoh (sometimes written butô) is the collective name for a diverse range of techniques and motivations for dance inspired by the Ankoku-Butoh movement. It typically involves playful and grotesque imagery performed in white-body makeup but there is no set style. Its origins have been attributed to Tatsumi Hijikata and Ohno Kazuo.

History

The first butoh piece was by Kinjiki (Forbidden Colours), by Tatsumi Hijikata. Based on the novel of the same name by Yukio Mishima, the piece explored the taboo of homosexuality and ended with the smothering of a live chicken between the legs of Yoshito Ohno (Ohno Kazuo's son) and Hijikata chasing Yoshito off the stage in darkness. This piece outraged the audience, resulted in the banning of Hijikata from the festival where Kinjiki premiered and established him as an iconoclast.

Hijikata went on further to deliberately work against conventional notions of dance, and inspired by the works of writers such as Yukio Mishima, Lautréamont, Artaud, Genet and de Sade, delved into worlds of the grotesque, darkness, decay and the transformation of the body into other materials such as smoke, dust, ghosts and animals. He also developed a poetic and surreal choreographic-language, butoh-fu (fu means "word" in Japanese), to help the dancer transform into other materials.

Starting from the early 80`s, Butoh experience a renaissance when Butoh groups started performing for the first time outside of Japan. The most famous of these groups is Sankai Juku.

Butoh's status at present is ambiguous. Accepted as a performance art overseas, it remains fairly unknown in Japan.

A Butoh performance choreographed by Yoshito Ohno appears at the beginning of the Tokyo section of Hal Hartley's 1996 film Flirt.

External links

• Don McLeod: "History of Butoh" http://www.zenbutoh.com/history.htm
• http://www.ne.jp/asahi/butoh/itto/ex-it/yumiko.htm
• Biography of Yoshito Ohno http://www.asahi-net.or.jp/~ab4t-mzht/yhistory/yhistorye1938.html
• Scrap Bodies: photos from a performance http://www.suenbutohcompany.net/projects/scrapbodies/projects_item_scrapbodies.htm
• Tadashi Endo in Synapsis: stills http://www.butoh-ma.de/
• Directory of international butoh artists in English: http://www.butoh.net

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