Overview
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Quiet House
A room strewn with rubble. People buried in the rubble, motionless. As if time is rewinding, they regain their bodies.
People who treat life like pebbles. Struggling. Giving up. History repeats itself. The story moves forward, traveling back and forth through time.
And so, I perform a ritual to mourn my body.
- BACC Performative Art Festival #8 (Bangkok, Thailand) / Project “Bombie Protocol” (Vientiane, Laos)
- Performer(s)
- Yuko Kawamoto
- Director/Choreographer
- Yuko Kawamoto, Teerawat 'Ka-ge' Mulvilai
- Venue
- THEATER X
- Year performed
- 2019
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Pollen Revolution
"Pollen Revolution", the solo masterpiece by butoh dancer Akira Kasai, premiered at Theater Tram in 2001 and has since garnered widespread acclaim internationally. Here the work is performed by his son, Mitsutake Kasai. With the goal of passing this legacy on to the next generation of dancers, the direction and choreography have been refined with each performance, evolving and maturing over time.
Participating Festivals
4-5 Jan 2018: Contemporary Dance Festival: Japan + East Asia (Japan Society, New York)
March 2020: Melbourne Performance
2022: 4th HOTPOT East Asia Dance Platform
-JaDaFo Dance Award 2017
- Performer(s)
- Tenshi-Kan
- Director/Choreographer
- Akira Kasai
- Venue
- Theatre Tram
- Year performed
- 2017
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Point, Distant View and Cantata; Wave; Fiume
'Wave' was the first of Katoh's performances, and has a simple structure, expanding and returning to single point with surges of energy.
'Point, Distant View and Cantata' features black spots on white costumes, inspired by Calder's paintings, with chanting and bell players sitting on both sides of the stage. It is a minimalist dance, performed with Asian footwork.
'Fiume' means 'river' in Italian. It is an eternal stream that flows from a single point to the sea, swallowing everything in its path. Movement, sound and voice merge to weave in the workings of life.
- Presented at the KATOH MIYAKO DANCE SPACE 1982
-'Wave' was premiered in 1980.
-'Point, Distant View and Cantata' was awarded Grand Prize for the 1982 Japanese Creative Choreography Competition
- Performer(s)
- Miyako Katoh Dance Space
- Director/Choreographer
- Miyako Katoh
- Venue
- Sogetsu Hall
- Year performed
- 1982
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Poetry Restaurant Theatre: Shiraishi Kazuko VS Byakko-sha
This footage documents dancers from Byakko-sha appearing in poet Kazuoko Shiraishi’s "Poetry Restaurant Theatre," performing to Shiraishi’s recitation with saxophone accompaniment by Keizo Inoue. Shiraishi frequently collaborated not only with jazz musicians but also with butoh dancers, and also attended Byakko-sha’s summer camps. As a performance of "Television Like Minakata Kumagusu" at Kyoto KBS Hall was scheduled approximately three weeks later, elements such as Sanae Hiruta’s solo and the stone-striking movements performed by the male dancers can also be seen in this work.
- Performer(s)
- Byakko-sha
- Director/Choreographer
- Isamu Osuka
- Venue
- Yao Seibu Hall
- Year performed
- 1984
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Playing with the Universe
Second meeting of Kazuo Ohno and the theatre company Taihen, following their meeting in May 1994. Part 1 is a performance of 'Reimai' by Taihen (directed by Kim Manri), Part 2 is a butoh dance by Kazuo Ohno and Yoshito Ohno, and Part 3 is a collaboration between Kazuo Ohno, Yoshito Ohno and the Taihen company.
- Performer(s)
- Performance Troupe TAIHEN
- Director/Choreographer
- Kim Manri, Kazuo Ohno, Yoshito Ohno
- Venue
- AI Hall (Itami City Theater Hall)
- Year performed
- 1996
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Pikka Don
A performance of a solo work previously presented at The Kitchen (New York), designed for video cameras.
- Performer(s)
- Yoshiko Chuma
- Director/Choreographer
- Yoshiko Chuma
- Year performed
- 1982
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Pieta ’97
I am dancing 'Pieta' again at DANCE EXPERIENCE, as I did last year, but the image of Pieta has in fact been with me for more than ten years now, and it is still deepening and transforming, still inviting me and motivating me to dance. "I know for sure that you will not look back. But I also know that when I approach death the one who will embrace me is you." (from the flyer)
- Participated in the 3rd OSAKA DANCE EXPERIENCE
- Masami Yurabe Butoh Performance
- Performer(s)
- TORII HALL
- Director/Choreographer
- Masami Yurabe
- Venue
- TORII HALL
- Year performed
- 1997
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Petite Hanako – The Actress Who Captured Rodin’s Heart
A docu-drama with English narration based on the extraordinary life of Hisa Ota, also known as Hanako, a Japanese actress who lived from the Meiji to the Showa era and spent much of her career in Europe. She was the only Japanese person to model for Auguste Rodin, and was also the inspiration for Ogai Mori's novel "Hanako". In this drama, Hanako is played by Anzu Furukawa.
- Performer(s)
- TV Asahi Corporation
- Year performed
- 1994
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People’s Inn
Noriko Ando Dance Performance. "Peoples' Inn - Revived Humanity," is composed of three parts: Part 1, "Ketch/Yawl Town"; Part 2, "Patch UP!"; and Part 3, "Ceremony for Death." "Ketch/Yawl Town" is a revival of a work first performed in 1962, for which Nobuo Ikemiya was responsible for the original concept and structure. Drawing on images of ketches and yawls (types of yachts) likened to a fictional town, it celebrates life and passion. "Patch UP!" makes use of television commercial narrations from the period. "Ceremony for Death" presents a prophecy of human extinction as "the beginning of a wonderful journey."
- The film has been damaged. Between parts 2 and 3, rehearsal footage of Part 3 "Ceremony for Death" has been inserted, featuring Noriko Ando's voice.
- Prior to 1960, Noriko Ando was active under the name Mitsuko Ando.
- Performer(s)
- Mitsuko Ando Dance Company
- Director/Choreographer
- Noriko Ando
- Venue
- Nakano Sunplaza Hall
- Year performed
- 1974
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Penitence
Performed at Butoh Festival '85 in 1985. Words by Teru Goi in the program read as follows:
Flesh dances to / cries of the dreaming taiko drums / the soul dances not / yet in the sunlight and shadows / the body sways in intervals / the shining heat of the present day / and the wrecked body / rises with awakened desires
From the lost dream / the liberated body / becomes a lonely dance exposed to the wind
The title 'Penitence' conveys in it the idea of returning the body to the soil, letting it rot, and digging it up again.
- Performer(s)
- Nippon Cultural Centre
- Director/Choreographer
- Teru Goi
- Venue
- Yurakucho Asahi Hall
- Year performed
- 1985
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The Peacock Boat
Based in Kyoto, the butoh company Kiraza was founded in 2000 by former Byakkosha member Tenko Ima, with the aim of reviving the power of tamafuri [reinvigoration of the soul through swinging] found in the origins of performing arts through the modern avant-garde form of butoh. From 2007 to 2016, the company performed annually at a theatre in a former hanamachi [entertainment district]. Their third work, "Kujaku-bune" [The Peacock Boat] is based on Kujaku Myōō, a peacock god that dispels evil. Held in a traditional Japanese theatre and with live nagauta music, the performances attracted large audiences.
-Gojo The Power of Sisters series vol.3
- Performer(s)
- Butoh Company KIRAZA
- Director/Choreographer
- Tenko Ima
- Venue
- Gojo-rakuen Kaburenjo
- Year performed
- 2010
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LA PARTIDA
Chilean artist Víctor Jara was loved around the world for his songs about people's joys, sorrows and their right to live. With a strong will he resisted violence and sang of courage and hope, but was massacred in a coup d'état in 1973. The people's will to live and the universal soul. What was his message? In this work, the artists tackled this question with a live performance of Jara's famous song 'La Partida', together with a group of disabled members of the general public who crawled out of the community, expressing it with their bodies.
- Performer(s)
- Performance Troupe TAIHEN
- Director/Choreographer
- Manri Kim
- Venue
- Aster Plaza : Midium Hall
- Year performed
- 1999
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Paradise Underground
Popular contemporary dancer Itoh Kim holds a secret party in this dream-like performance. An explosively energetic 49 minutes, this piece is full of highlights, with humorous and showy underground imagery that is typically Itoh. An absurd performance by the 11 frenzied Tokyo Reiwa Underground Dancers, co-starring Kim Itoh and Kazutoki Umezu.
-Tokyo Real Underground (Tokyo Tokyo FESTIVAL Special 13): 1 April - 15 August 2021
-Takao Kawaguchi Selection: Un Certain Regard
- Performer(s)
- NPO Dance Archive Network
- Director/Choreographer
- Kim Ito
- Venue
- Filmed at Former Hakubutsukan Dobutsuen Station [Museum Zoo Station]
- Year performed
- 2021
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Papillon en Offrande
Solo butoh performance by Masaki Iwana. First performed in 1992 in Paris, Pescara (Italy), Chania (Greece), St Petersburg, Bucharest and Tokyo. This video is of the performance held at the 3rd MAMU Festival of Butoh and Jazz in Göttingen, Germany, in 1994. It is based on the memory of a woman Iwana met as a child, who had lost her husband in the war and went mad, wandered the streets in an uchikake [formal silk kimono overcoat].
- Performer(s)
- Mamu Festival
- Director/Choreographer
- Masaki Iwana
- Venue
- Junges Theater Göttingen
- Year performed
- 1994
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Oval Illusion (DAEN-GENSO)
Thoughts are always elliptical. They come near then far into the distance again. Is existence nothing but distance? There are many overlapping ellipses. Life and death, light and shadow, and my reflected self wanders through the labyrinth of the body. There, the attractions and repulsions of butoh and image violently collide. A flood of shadows overflow from the inside out. This is the start of an outside without an inside. When these incidents occur on stage, the large ellipse tilts.' - Waguri Yukio
Waguri Yukio + Kozensha Butoh Performance
- Performer(s)
- Yukio Waguri + Kozensha
- Director/Choreographer
- Yukio Waguri
- Venue
- Aichi Prefectural Art Theater : Mini theater
- Year performed
- 1996
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OUT OFF (Rabenstein and The Collector)
The second ’Beauties and Beasts' project collaboration between Kim Ito and Yumiko Yoshioka, performed in Tokyo and Avignon. The concept is parallel solo performances (Yoshioka's 'Rabenstein' and Ito's 'The Collector'), which performed side by side become a duet. Both solos examine boundaries, and look at themes of the outsider. The German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel praised the performance as 'a coexistence of extremes: the pleasure of playing in paradise alongside the fear of the exiled'.
- Performer(s)
- tatoeba
- Director/Choreographer
- Delta Ra'i
- Venue
- Tokyo FM Hall
- Year performed
- 1994
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Otoko Sengoku Performance
The inaugural show of the “Kurando Group,” a project by Komatsuya, a long-established Kyoto kimono manufacturer known for its bold and distinctive designs. The event was held outdoors at the entrance of the Kyoto International Conference Center and, despite being hit by a thunderstorm on the day, proceeded without incident. Male dancers from Byakko-sha performed wearing "16th-century howling men’s costumes" made from kimono fabric. An advertisement for "Kurando" published in Byakko-sha’s newsletter states: "Kurando is, in fact, a private brand created in defiance of ____."
- Performer(s)
- Byakko-sha
- Director/Choreographer
- Isamu Osuka
- Venue
- Kyoto International Conference Center
- Year performed
- 1987
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OTOEYAMA
Through a chain of small mountains connecting villages
In the harsh sorrow-filled Northern seasons
The waters of Ishikari flowed. - From the flyer
Otoeyama [Mount Otoe] could be seen across the Ishikari River from the house where Goi Teru was born and raised. Together with Mount Okirikawa and Mount Mumei, the 730m high flat mountain is known locally as the Otoe Mountain Range.
-Goi Teru Butoh Solo-Don't cry boy
-36th Dance Critics Society of Japan Award (2004)
- Performer(s)
- Teru Goi
- Director/Choreographer
- Teru Goi
- Venue
- Terpsichore
- Year performed
- 2004
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Opening Performance at Disco Twin Star Kagurazaka
In 1992 Twin Star, a new disco aimed at adults, opened in Kagurazaka. For the opening night, Byakko-sha’s ART BODIC performed a special live show, which included a geisha performance and a kinpun [gold powder/body paint] show. ART BODIC was Byakko-sha's "takeout" performance group, operating alongside their main productions. It "delivered" Body and Art to a wide range of events, from weddings and birthday parties to concerts and TV commercials. The group aimed to create a "more thrilling performance spectacle" that transcended the stereotypical boundaries of butoh.
- Performer(s)
- Byakko-sha
- Director/Choreographer
- Isamu Osuka
- Venue
- Kagurazaka Twin Star
- Year performed
- 1992
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120 Days of Sodom
"Following 'Butoh Works I: Nouvelle Tragique', performed in January of the same year, this piece is based on Marquis de Sade's '120 Days of Sodom', translated into Japanese by Tatsuhiko Shibusawa. In Akira Kasai's 'Twilight of the Gods', published on 10 March, he touches on Sade's innocence.
In May 'Dead Beauty: For Edgar Allan Poe' was performed as 'Butoh Works III', and shortly afterwards, Kasai temporarily closed Tenshikan to study eurythmy in Germany."
- Performer(s)
- Tenshi-Kan
- Director/Choreographer
- Akira Kasai
- Venue
- Daiichi Seimei Hall
- Year performed
- 1979
