Butoh is a form of Japanese dance theatre that demands several years to master. Born in the aftermath of the second world war, suitably named ‘the dance of utter darkness’, it attempted to redefine the body while rebelling against convention. U-BU-SU-NA, by Butoh master Kentaro Kujirai, flickers between a lost Japanese heritage and his urban surroundings at present; conflictedly, they co-exist.
Four dancers (Kujira, Makoto Sadakata, Izumi Noguchi and Hirohisa Kanamori) drift across a bare stage. Water droplets are perceived like a soft hypnosis, later tainted by faces that stretch into slow, pained screams. Arms forage the space in swift, untraceable patterns, hands are alive and seeking. The movement, unsettled as it is, invites group arrangements that fluctuate organically. But only when slowed down, the choreology laid out with hyperpresence, do we enter it more fully.
The dancers never waver from that presence, but they diverge in stylistic approach. A duet between Kujirai and Kanamori sees the former lofty and elegant, a bird that cannot quite take flight with sweeping, diagonal shapes and off-balance shunts; the latter remains earthbound, favouring grotesque shapes and angered qualities. Butoh resonates with the ugly, so it lends itself well to Kujirai’s themes of discrimination and incongruence. Bodies shrink into tense inversions, a spell of rigidity cast on joints. Static laden vocals sound as if reversed, and breezy upper body movement is cathartically dragged downwards to flat-footed stamping.
A keen collaborator, Kujirai created U-BU-SU-NA closely with dramaturg and poet Shuri Kido, as the first in a BUTOH series: To the Light of Taxidermy Vol. 1 (a response to the work of Butoh founders Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno), and it presents a much-needed opportunity to witness modern-day Butoh within the European dance scene. Butoh’s scope as theatrical, abstract and poetic is clear even to a newcomer. The piece emerges from its shadowy enigma into comedic cameos. Kujirai trips over spasming, disobedient limbs to Schubert’s Ave Maria, utterly at odds with his body. Later, a projection floods the theatre stage and the full cast roll through stars. The poignancy of this moment comes from having seen all that came before it; the starry night suspends a buried legacy somewhere between its origins and today, where it remains in memory.
Bar the injections of performative humour, U-BU-SU-NA resides in an insular, tormented world, reflecting Butoh’s characteristics as spiritual and emotional, a form that honours discomfort. The trance-like experience evoked is uniquely personal, whether it be a pleasant trance of peace, or utter darkness after all.
