Butoh: Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy

Chapter 1. Butoh Alchemy

Chapter One Butoh Alchemy There is an orientalism in the most restless pioneer, and the farthest west is but the farthest east. —Henry David Thoreau, A Week on the Concord and Merrimack Rivers Butoh is a form of dance theater born in Japan out of the turmoil of the post– World War II era, partly as a refraction of America’s bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and more generally in protest of Western materialism: “I don’t want a bad check called democracy,” is how butoh founder Hijikata Tatsumi sometimes put it. I first saw butoh at the Festival of New Dance in Montreal in 1985 with Nakajima Natsu’s dance Niwa (The Garden). I wrote about Niwa and sent Nakajima the article. She invited me to Japan and took me to a butoh class with her teacher, Ohno Kazuo, who cofounded butoh with Hijikata. Ohno was eighty when I met him in his studio in 1986 and as of this writing is a centenarian. I have been a butoh addict ever since. I understood this form of dance immediately, because it is not filtered through classical or folk forms, but its basic material is the body itself in its changing conditions . It is furthermore a hybrid form of dance, linking physical and spiritual cultures from around the world, also accounting for aging bodies as well as the buoyant qualities of youth. I have studied many dance forms, including ballet and modern dance with its postmodern offshoots. Butoh fascinates me most because of its shape-shifting potentials and its somatic shamanistic basis, not marking race so much as metamorphic change. The manner in which metamorphosis is achieved becomes part of the aesthetic of the dance and is individual, as the essays in part 2 explore. Metamorphosis and alchemy are linked as the very words suggest; they both point toward transformative change and connectivity, even when the change seems to come magically from nowhere. 12 Alchemy and Morphology Butoh has several translations as well as differing meanings in Japanese. Most basically, it means “dance step,” but Hijikata evoked an older meaning, that of “ancient dance.” It also refers to Western social dances imported to Japan, and some say it refers to Western dance in general, but this would not be its central meaning.1 Butoh now identifies a genre of dance, and as a term in use internationally , it accrues meaning. This chapter introduces butoh as alchemy, how its various Eastern and Western elements come together, fuse, and transform into something new. The values and means of metamorphosis arise in this context, and we see how butoh morphology rests on globalizing elements in dance throughout the twentieth century. Shape-shifting The therapeutic potentials of butoh are founded in shamanic alchemy, and by this I’m not suggesting the paranormal or supernatural but rather the very real ability of the body to manifest healing through dance and movement. Dance as therapy (also called “dance movement therapy” and “dance therapy” in America) is widely practiced by professionals in America, Japan, Europe, and elsewhere. Dance therapists wouldn’t call themselves “shamans,” because they don’t consider themselves mediums between this world and another; rather they employ dance and movement toward healing as shamans often do. Shamans—also known as shape-shifters—are healers first and foremost; dance and repetitive movement (such as shaking, stamping, leaping, and whirling) are part of their seemingly miraculous means toward healing. As shamanist, butoh uses movement to pass between conscious and unconscious life, finally distilling this in various forms of dance and theater. This might be said of other kinds of dance as well, but butoh methods cultivate this passage in-between in unique ways, one of which is called ma in Japanese, as we mentioned in the introduction and explore throughout the text. At the New York Butoh Festival in 2007, Tatsuro Ishii spoke about the shamanistic basis of butoh as a dance form.2 He further outlined how butoh moves out internationally because of this. Shamanism is deeply embedded in Asian sensibilities , as he showed on film. I also recognize shamanism in butoh, a kind not based in religious or ritual practices. Butoh is based in creative arts and draws upon the shamanic aspect of metamorphosis; it involves several core shamanic practices that transcend cultural boundaries, as we will see. If butoh has a shamanist basis, that doesn’t mean that butoh dancers are taught how to be shamans or that they have this as a goal...