Japanese Dance: Butoh
This somehow just popped up on my youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1cKO9rGxV40
Surprising interesting. Never heard of this before and found it interesting enough to share here to see if anyone knows much about this art form?
Surprising interesting. Never heard of this before and found it interesting enough to share here to see if anyone knows much about this art form?
Comments (3)
To understand Butoh we have to put a bit of context which doesn't seem to appear in the video.
Butoh is a remake of classical Japanese dance-drama Noh (?, N?, which means "talent"). One of the main characters of Noh is "shite" (??, ?? both human and ghost. But "shite" is usually translated as death). The themes of Noh are infinite but most of them are related to Japanese Shinto and old classical tales. I recommend Tanizaki Junichiro, for instance.
Years passed and WWII came. Japan lost the war in a very drastic way and the Japanese people felt a crisis of identity. Thanks to this, it started flourishing new ways of expressing art. Butoh is one of them.
Basically, Butoh is a mode of Noh but it is more grotesque, and it shows taboo topics, mainly homosexuality. The main character is dressed up like a woman instead of a ghost. The other characters are naked and they are very young. I remember that in 'Confessions of a Mask' by Mishima, one of the characters masturbates because he feels attracted to Greek and Roman sculptures, etc.
Yukio Mishima wrote a lot of this, and he left a good legacy in both Noh and Butoh.