Butoh in the Dō The Dance of Darkness Past and Present Brad Breiten (Hokkaido)
The 2020 International Hokkaido Butoh Festival is scheduled to begin May 10, 2020.
Regular CONNECT readers may remember in the October, 2019 issue a lovely, dark, and emotional piece by Laura Jones titled “The Enigma of Butoh: Kyoto’s Dark Dance.” I really loved the piece as it truly captured the wonder that comes from experiencing butoh for the first time (having experienced a similar situation I felt transported back in time reading it). Butoh still seems little-known in Japan, which is surprising given that its history began in Tokyo and has since spread around the world, but that does not mean it is disappearing here. Quite the contrary, in areas all around Japan there have been initiatives to reinvigorate artistic interest in the performance. This can be seen in the opening of spaces primarily for butoh (like the Kyoto Butohkan that Laura visited, which was established in 2016), an ever-growing network of dancers and choreographers, and events centered on Butoh and its practitioners.
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All photos provided by Brad Breiten
After reading Laura’s piece that described the experience of seeing Butoh, I was compelled to elaborate a little bit more about what it is, and where you can find it.
What is Butoh? Butoh is an original Japanese dance style that was developed during the post-WWII period. It gained popularity in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The post-WWII period in Japan witnessed an explosion of artists in every medium, pushing the boundaries of what was accepted in literature, art, music, and performance. It was in this period of avant-garde exploration that butoh first found an audience in Tokyo’s smoke-filled basement bars. Butoh, originally called ankoku butō (暗黒舞踏), or “the dance of utter darkness,” was pioneered by two men: Hijikata Tatsumi (1928-1986) and Ohno Kazuo (1906-2010). The initial butoh performance was a creation by dancer and choreographer Hijikata Tatsumi called Kinshiki (禁色), or “Forbidden
