Butoh is the ultimate rebellion – in fact, Hijikata Tatsumi the founder of Butoh once called his dance “the rebellion of the flesh”. His first Butoh performances were in downtown Tokyo and at Tokyo University out in the streets, as a form of protest against the wholesale Westernization of Japanese culture after the devastation of World War II: he rebelled against the systems of capitalism and so-called “democracy”, and he rebelled against the proliferation of materialism. He rebelled against the “Westernization” of the Japanese body: he observed the “Western” posture is upright and lifting up toward heaven, up and away from the Earth, in contrast to the body of the rice farmers in his native Tohoku in northern Japan which was crouching down, back bent forward, arms reaching toward the earth, knees bowed outward to accommodate the weight of gravity and poverty, and repetition.
This is one of the best documentaries about Butoh for a deeper dive:
Hijikata sought a dance that could reclaim his Indigenous body, which, by the 1960’s, was a foreign concept, and yet as intimately close as the dirt under his feet.
What is your rebellion of the flesh? For many years when I first started dancing Butoh, my rebellion was against my own body. So my dance very much reflected my love/hate relationship with my self-image. For a while it was terribly self-destructive and then it became something else. When I surrendered my body to being moved by the mythological imagery, the body poetry of butoh, my self-image ceased to matter. My self hatred and critique melted away, and I experienced becoming the dance. And somehow, in the process I was transformed and healed profoundly.
Amazingly, it wasn’t until I started studying shamanism that I began to understand how deeply shamanic Butoh really is. It brings you face to face with the fullness of your corporeality through poetic imagery, through symbolism and archetype. It deconstructs your concepts of yourself – if you allow it – until nothing remains but the dance. In order to reclaim our soverignty we must reclaim our bodies – our Indigenous bodies – they are buried in the bowels of the earth. This dance will take you there.
It is easier to show you than try to explain! Come dance with me, and experience this for yourself. It is a joyful and freeing process for every body. Link will be posted here for Members only at 11 am. With love, your Savage