SOULFEATHER

 Butoh – Ghost Dance

The dancers exhibit a variety of symptoms. Ghostly white make-up covers their skin and hair. Their heads are bald, or wild with an untamed mane. Their digits, limbs, and muscles move in slow motion, as if lifted and tweaked by invisible strings. Their faces are blank, or contorted with silent screams, emotionless tension and haunting possession. Their eyes are unfocused -- or focused inward -- on regions most of us are reluctant to explore.

It is not for the weak.

It mirrors the situation the modern human is in.

Butoh doesn't shirk from exploring unpleasant human feelings, which probably explains why it can be so disturbing to watch. People react in different ways, they get angry, or they're so moved they weep. Some walk out, calling [the dancers] freaks. Children often react differently: they wave at the dancers, or imitate them; they are fascinated and want to connect.

However audiences react to Butoh, one thing is certain -- they will react.

I am one of the fortunate people to have had the opportunity to study and perform Butoh with the late great mentor Doranne Crable (1940 – 2007) who studied with Kazuo Ohno, one of the two founding fathers of this unique modern dance form.

Coming out in a black slip and a kimono, Crable, in her form of Butoh named Kagami, (a softer more gentle version of Butoh) danced through the gallery and through the standing crowd to the sound of four boom boxes simultaneously playing different music. At one point mounting a pedestal, where she danced an image called "old dog," in which her legs began trembling, a woman in the audience was so moved that she reached out to help Crable down. Crable reacted by drawing an invisible string in the air between their two hearts. For Crable and others, it was one of the more memorable moments of the evening's performance.

Butoh is a healing force yet defies definition:

What exactly IS Butoh? I find that it's easier to define what Butoh isn't. Butoh isn't mime. (Don't let the white face paint fool you.) Although many dancers are often involved, performances don't have linear story lines like plays or operas. Butoh also isn't about being pretty or showing off tricky dance manoeuvres. Rather than trying to impress an audience, Butoh attempts to express the human condition.

"Butoh is grounded in the earth. Rather than leaping off of it, I dance into it. Sometimes it's as if my feet are magnetized and I'm walking on a metal surface, and other times it feels as if I can walk on lily pads.” Dorrane Crable

The dancer’s eyes, like those of all Butoh dancers, appear distant and unfocused. It's an inner focus. It's like looking through curtains of rain. The facial features are often devoid of emotion so as to not impose emotions on the audience; instead of making them feel, the dancer lets them feel for themselves.

To refer to different motions, and as an aid to the dance, images from nature are borrowed (such as a heron or a rose) and translated into movement. Expressed in improvisational dance form, these images provoke emotional responses based on the viewer's own experiences. When dancing the form of "old dog" the goal is not literal imitation. Rather, the motions symbolize something larger, such as frailty or infirmity in general. On a personal level, the body movements might trigger an emotional memory. Watching the form danced, "old dog" might make you think of your grandfather or grandmother who passed away.

This is Butoh, an underground dance form that emerged in Japan in the 1960s.

Butoh emerged out of this chaos. Its founders were a young rebellious modern dancer named Tatsumi Hijikata (1928 -1986), and his partner Kazuo Ohno (1906 - 2010). Hijikata was dissatisfied with the Japanese modern dance scene, feeling that it was merely a copy of the work being done in the West.

Butoh was born in a turbulent time, when Japan was struggling with its cultural identity. In the aftermath of World War II, Japan became an increasingly modernized, urbanized, and thus westernized society. This didn't sit well with many people, and this sense of unease had a profound influence on Butoh.

In its beginnings, Butoh was in large part an act of rebellion. It was a rejection of "progress" and a rejection of Westernisation with its ideals of beauty. Tired of seeing ballet dancers skipping around in tutus, Butoh performers offered something new, shocking, and without rules -- an avant-garde dance form that nevertheless was distinctly Japanese.

There is a light floated by the human body and there is a definite river of darkness that runs through Butoh, and if you swim upstream, you will find traditional Japanese priestesses dancing fertility rituals in the dry riverbed mud to bring the rains and harvest. But if you swim downstream you will find where Butoh brings light to the most profound darkness: humanity’s atomic flashes of horror burning Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

For myself, Crable and other Butoh artists, Butoh's ultimate purpose is not to shock, but rather to heal.

“I don’t think dance can be seen independently from the notion that man lives… There are always hidden wounds, those of the heart, and if you know how to accept and endure them, you will discover the pain and joy, which is impossible to express with words. You will reach the realm of poetry which only the body can express.” Kazuo Ohno

"Flamenco is fiery and sensual, ballet is ethereal and ephemeral, and modern dance displays the beauty and power of the human body. But Butoh creates and addresses a kind of beauty that can't be defined, Butoh involves stripping away the protective masks that humans wear as performers in order to come into the vulnerable and gentle part of the human heart.” Doranne Crable

I will say one thing, in what Dorrane gave to me, in the dance, I experienced moments where it was not “me” dancing, it was not “me” holding the strings that moved “me”, it was something else. The strings must have been the intention I set before the dance, the intention I set as I removed the mask of ego, the intention that was attached to the human spirit that danced me, as this she taught me to do.

Thank you for your Gift Doranne, thank you!