Butoh Troupe Transcends Form Eloquently

Lewis Segal’s review of Sankai Juku’s “Hiyomeki” represented a surprising lapse into “Orientalist” thinking (“Sankai Juku Stumbles Into Unfamiliar, Western Territory,” Oct. 18). Segal regrets the troupe’s shift away from “authentic . . . classic butoh” that emphasized “a web of suffering.” He feels they are mistaken in moving “toward conventional Western modern dance--a world that the members of Sankai Juku are in no way qualified to enter.”

This normally perceptive writer seems to desire that the Japanese dancers remain exotic “others” writhing in grotesque lyricism, frozen in time. Does he really wish them to isolate themselves in the original conception of butoh as a shell-shocked response by victims of the atomic blasts of Hiroshima and Nagasaki?

Early butoh sought authenticity in the body shorn of identifiers such as race, ethnicity, nation or gender. Dancers delved into the forbidden, dark recesses of the soul. However fascinating, compelling and terrifying first-generation butoh was, more than 40 years have passed. Times have changed. Artists, too, change in response to society’s needs. Those who expect contemporary butoh to focus on the grotesque will discover that the new generation has a different agenda.

Deeply spiritual and ritualistic without specific references, “Hiyomeki” alternately evokes Buddhist and Hindu sculpture, birth and death, the growth of flowers, medieval Christian iconography, Druid ritual, prehistoric Japanese funerary statues (haniwa), abstract modern dance and New Age encounters with otherworldly or alien beings. As Segal correctly points out, it is in many ways a very formal kind of modern dance.

But he misapplies Western aesthetic standards by labeling the performers “bad modern dancers.” Lamenting the troupe’s “picturesque attitudinizing,” he suggests that “the company offered physically shallow execution: hinged, puppety arms that left the choreography looking ungrounded and even arbitrary in its effects.”

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In the language of Orientalism, such verbiage suggests hollow, false, untrustworthy “others” who are different from us in dangerous ways. The implication is that these “picturesque Japanese puppets” are copying the form without the content, and that they have no right to appropriate “our” modern dance.

That 20th century Western painting, dance and theater have successfully appropriated Japanese forms does not bother the Orientalist mentality. Segal, who has extensive exposure to and knowledge of both Western and non-Western dance, ought to know better.

“Hiyomeki” was created in 1996 for Paris’ Theatre de la Ville, which since 1982 has commissioned six works by Sankai Juku. “Hiyomeki” is a triumph of transcultural performance. Evident is a French aesthetic, with preference for symmetry. Another clear influence is Ohno Kazuo’s lyrical, feminine, spiritual butoh style.

Accompanied by Kako Takashi’s and Yoshikawa Yoichiro’s hypnotic music (which Segal found “portentous”), the dancers emerged from darkness to a nearly barren stage covered with sand and ash. Their faces were sometimes contorted with unutterable words. The muscles of their lean torsos quivered, expanded and contracted as they walked, stumbled, grasped for invisible support, fell and writhed on the floor. Occasionally disturbed by their movements, the sand swirled in mini-dust storms. A halo-like metal ring created a sacred circle on the ground, then rose and hovered above like a holy icon. The dancers expressed wonder, confusion, anguish, awe and loss. Their arms formed lotus blossoms growing in the void. In one stunning solo, a spotlighted Ushio Amagatsu posed and slowly revolved like a sculptured ocean wave, or Krishna dancing on a turning pedestal.

Incredibly, Segal felt the performance “lacked both the movement invention of modern dance and the profound metaphysical connection of butoh.” This challenging form is certainly not to everyone’s taste. But to those audience members who, like me, stood and applauded in stunned appreciation, “Hiyomeki” offered fresh insights into butoh’s lively transformations.

Carol Fisher Sorgenfrei is a professor of theater at UCLA, where she heads the doctoral program in critical studies. She has written and lectured extensively on Japanese and cross-cultural performance, and is the translator of works by Japanese avant-garde playwright Shuji Terayama. She is also a playwright.