Masaki iwana biography of michael
Extract from Masaki Iwana writings on Butoh Blanc (White Butoh) available on http://www.iwanabutoh.com/butoh.php and in the artist’s book.
Workshop: Fringe Lab -Dublin 2
26th of June: 12-4pm
27th to 29th of June: 4-8pm
contact & bookings: movingbodiesfestival@gmail.com
My White Butoh is not intended as an antithesis to ‘ankoku butoh’ (black butoh or the dance of darkness) of Tatsumi Hijikata, the founder of butoh. Rather, by using the word ‘white’ I stress the philosophical advocacy of ankoku butoh: a butoh dancer must completely expose the ‘darkness of his own existence.’ In this interpretation, I amplify it and assert that such exposure should be so complete that it comes under the ‘white sun’, meaning a perfectly clear and cloudless light.
Almost all modern dances in Western countries, or worldwide, are ‘created’ with the basic method of first clarifying a concept and then collecting and arranging dancers’ external movements and forms to realize that concept. In contrast, one of butoh’s largest characteristics is to produce – or more accurately, ‘give birth to’ – dances by guilding and drawing out the ‘dance’ already immanent in the dancer’s body (this ‘dance’ may be referred to as ‘original experience’; the word ‘inner landscape’ is often used in the butoh world). As a result, some butoh dances do not involve specific or phenomenological forms and movements as their basic element.
Butoh dancers have always referred to the body with that immanent ‘original landscape’ (‘dance’) as ‘nikutai’, to be distinguished from the physical body, or flesh, as a biological entity. To realize ‘nikutai’, a butoh dancer must recognize and amass personal experiences, memories and bodily habits; and since butoh is an art of expression, he must also have the Turmoil A History of Butoh Butoh performance is fixated on the destruction and reconstruction of the mind, body, spirit, and identity; on the fact that cells are dying and being born throughout our bodies in every moment. The reality of this constant manifestation of life and death within the overall arc of a lifespan provides essential inspiration – Michael Sakomoto Westernisation has impacted many different cultures to such an extent that the original culture might have been diffused into a hybrid of its original form and the western influence. The Japanese culture is one of many that have been affected by this. By the time the war took place, the Japanese were tired of the influence of the West and was looking for a way to express the voice within. Buto is a form of dance theatre that came into being in 1950 after the Second World War. The two main founders, Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno made use of the raw expression that is dormant within the human body to develop it into what we know today. The form itself is extremely grotesque and charged with raw images of death, sex and other topics of taboo. The following essay will look at how Buto was discovered and developed as well as the various performers, mainly the previously mentioned founders (Hijikata and Ohno). History of the form During the Second World War, the United States of America engaged in a nuclear war with Japan. The result was the death of over 100 000 people instantly. In many cases, this could be seen as the final straw and Japanese culture started to fight back. Buto first appeared after World War 2 when Japan’s “culture was in a state of transition” (Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis, 1990). Because of westernisation, many Japanese frowned upon the loss of their culture and were opposed to the disintegration thereof. After the war, Japan and the United States signed a mutual defence treaty (Treaty of Mutual Cooperation and Security) which meant that Japan will Masaki Iwana […] as long as butoh is a kind of expression, we must have the ability and responsibility to ‘edit’ those inner elements. I have no interest in those who see butoh as a kind of exotic spectacle of strange movements and bizarre gestures and who want to ‘learn’ it by some sort of rote process. Butoh is an ineffable kind of behavior produced by the body itself, possessing neither name nor form. All infomrations on Masaki Iwana are best read on his website and in his book. Here an extract of his writing direcly from http://www.iwanabutoh.com First I would like to speak about what kind of training one should pursue, because dance is “a realization of one’s dream through the body”, one must first know one’s body very well. When I say ‘the body’, I mean a total body that includes all levels – the bio-skeletal body, the spirit, and intuition. Dance is not movement in itself, but it is greatly related with movement. Therefore, one must know the functions of movements. I often compare the body with a building. The function of the body, like the ones of the building, has If these three work well together, it becomes movement, and the movement can have a relationship with dance. Before entering the dance training, we train the body which is the valuable instrument of dance. This training is for flexibility and core strength – using stretching – and power and balance training. These exercises have a single aim – by training the lower-body (the base of our body), we prepare the body so that the upper body can relax. Now about the dance training. In order to let the body function entirely, I made about five fundamental dances. These are truly fundamental movements that one can encounter in daily life. For example, to walk, to rise up (to stand), to crouch, to roll o by Gary Brackett I am writing about the modern Japanese dance form Butoh – this is an essay and a jam session. I will explain a bit of this dance but first I have to put it in the right frame. You can google Butoh later if I tickled your curiosity. In Trieste there is a little following of Butoh with a modest amount of workshops, performances and dancers. You might have even seen a few strange and provocative street events. “We are feelingless people.” Antonin Artaud. Dear descendants of the year 52,020. If you’re reading this, 50,000 years have passed and I’m sending you this message in a bottle (a very old method of calling for help) from the far, far past. Two words: Nagasaki and Hiroshima. We are taught in our history classes what happened in 1945. That two atomic bombs in a flash obliterated two cities. It was war. (Have you all finished with that yet?) The war was already won but the politicians and generals had what we call AN IDEA. Innocent old people in rest homes, babies, shoppers, fish in aquariums, dogs and cats, children playing in their park: anybody and everybody that had really nothing to do with the war were annihilated in a bright, instantaneous flash. Can you guys there in the future feel and imagine the horror? We teach it to our children but it often goes in one ear and out the other. Like this other word, Holocaust. We understood the horror but simply understanding wasn’t enough to stop the wars and famines, the ubiquitous violence and other miseries of our time. You could say that there’s something wrong with our teaching methods. We only pass on ideas and stories but not the real life lessons. By the way, do you all there in the future still have bodies? Have you become immortal yet? Here they talk about uploading consciousness into ha
Turmoil - A History of Butoh
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