Distilling principles – an investigation of the role of consciousness in butoh training

Abstract

This essay provides a personal and critical approach to the Japanese contemporary performance expression of butoh through an investigation of the role of physical consciousness in contemporary performance training. Butoh is presented here as a performing entity containing its own existential movement aesthetic as well as reflecting social, political and cultural debates which surround the body in performance. In aligning butoh to certain initiatives within contemporary western dance theatre pedagogy, the article considers the shift from a range of contemporary form-based movement techniques which can be copied and accurately replicated in the body of the student, towards a conscious expression of movement that is cultivated out of a dialogue existing between internalised sensibilities and externalised movement forms. In comparing the author's own performance training experiences in Decroux Mime technique and contemporary dance with those in butoh, this paper aims to locate the distinct relationship between physical and aesthetic consciousness in the interface between butoh training and performance practice.

Keywords:

• Decroux Mime technique
• Butoh
• physical consciousness
• anatomical imagery

Notes

1. For a further critique on the role of consciousness in dance see Valery (1964, cited in Franko 1995, p. 1).

2. Studies of this form are taken from my undergraduate training experiences studying Decroux Mime technique at the Amsterdam Theatre School Hoge School voor de Kunsten, August–December 1995.

3. I refer here to choreographer Deborah Hay's description of the relationship between the dancer's three-dimensional form and its sensitivity to both the surrounding the relation to space and to other dancer's bodies, based on the perceptions of their own physical limitations: ‘Thank Heavens for the limitations of the three dimensional body that allows us to play’ (Taken from workshop with Deborah Hay, The Connected Body Symposium, School of New Dance Development, Amsterdam, June 2005).

4. The notion of a western avant-garde is of particular relevance here as butoh can be considered a relatively ‘short-term’ tradition whose legacy is determined by what Kuniyoshi terms a ‘variegated genealogy’ (Kuniyoshi 1989), and whose evolution spans just four decades and as many continents since its arrival in what was arguably a volatile and culturally fragmented climate. According to Hoffman et al. (1987), while forging a new identity for butoh within Japan, German expressionist dance was to play an important role in the cultivation of Ohno and Hijikata's corporeal expression where both were initially influenced by modern dancer Takaya Eguchi, one of Mary Wigman's disciples. A student of pioneering modern dancer Rudolph Laban, Wigman's preoccupation with eastern mysticism prompted her 1926 solo performance, Witch Dance, which explores the raw expression of dance, echoing primal rhythms in natural movements which reflect a similar aesthetic to those found within butoh.

5. The development of butoh from its roots in communal training cultures towards a universal dissemination in the form of international symposia, workshops and training programmes is representative of a wider shift in both eastern and western performance training practices. Here the ethos and the appeal of individualised and idiosyncratic expert disciplinary practices can be seen to have lost favour in contrast with informal mentoring programmes, interdisciplinary and collaborative research methods and hybridised training approaches as illustrated within formal higher education mixed mode Performing Arts courses as well as through individual directives.

6. While acknowledging the importance of site-based practice and training in butoh, the current writing remains focused on the role of physical consciousness within SU-EN's studio-based butoh training. For further guidance on the role of the sense in site-based movement training practices please see Orr and Sweeney (2011).

7. Taken from unpublished statement by SU-EN disclosed within her butoh training workshop, Haglund Skola, Sweden, 2001.

8. Eric Hawkins and Doris Humphries represent two defining signature practices in twentieth century dance technique, where common to both is the establishment of a conscious relationship with gravity that emphasises the use of breath, contraction and suspension in moving down to the floor and returning to standing.