Secret Origins: Radical Japanese cinema of the 1960s and 1970s chez Jonas Mekas

By Paul Ben-Itzak
Copyright 2013, 2019 Paul Ben-Itzak

First published on the DI/AV on February 14, 2013. Today’s re-posting is sponsored by Slippery Rock University Dance.

If you think Butoh is the excruciatingly slow (or delectably languorous, depending on your point of view) dance interpreted by performers doused in flour that its Western acolytes have laid claim to with Zen-like fervor and wonder why this post-Hiroshima and Nagasaki art form was once called the ‘dance of darkness,’ Donald Richie’s 1959 “Sacrifice / Gisei,” being screened Sunday February 24 at Anthology Film Archives as part of its mini-festival of Film Experiments in 1960-70s Japan (meant to coincide with the Museum of Modern Art’s Tokyo 1955 – 1970: A New Avant-Garde exhibition closing Monday), will set you straight. The dance captured here is neither slow nor nuanced. Indeed, in a response typical of an ignorant Western critic, when the 8mm to video 10-minute piece opened (American so-called Butoh interpreters would take 10 minutes just to move a muscle), the performers running in circles and lifting their arms over alternating shoulders moved so gracelessly that at first I mistook the choreography for a paltry Japanese imitation of Judson, before I read the press release and realized that this Butoh authentically captured reveals the opposite, how diluted the ‘dance of darkness’ has become as it’s been transmitted by generations of non-Japanese interpreters. Click here to read the rest of the story.

Celebrating 20 years of giving a voice to dancers: Eiko & Koma on the Pleasures of Eating Dirt for Public Service

By Alissa Cardone
Copyright 2003, 2018 Alissa Cardone

NEW YORK — During Obon, a very important annual ritual for the dead practiced in Japan, lighted lanterns are hung outside houses to guide the spirits of ancestors back home to visit the living. It is a ritual of many shadows, family reunion and much joy, filled with flickering candles, smoke trails, dancing and sixth sense, and like Eiko & Koma’s latest environmental installation performance “Offering,” it is a ritual for the living.

A dance conceived to urge regeneration after loss and, according to its authors, “to serve a communal need for a ritual of mourning,” I saw “Offering” Friday, during its free four-day run in the cemetery of St. Mark’s Church, where it was presented by Danspace Project. Staged last summer in six NYC parks, this time it was staged in the middle of St. Mark’s yard, atop gravestones (some containing the remains of celebrated NYC founding fathers), a few mounds of fresh soil and an awkward dirt-stuffed oversized altar sculpture that spun. Between two wise billowing trees, after a misty rain, dressed in fire colored sheaths, with Eiko dragging an arrow, the duo moved like fevered sleepwalkers in and out of the earth, towards and away from each other in magnetic indecision — do we sink or do we rise?

(To receive the complete article, subscribers please contact publisher Paul Ben-Itzak at paulbenitzak@gmail.com. Not a subscriber? Subscribe to the DI for one year for just $36 by designating your PayPal payment in that amount to paulbenitzak@gmail.com, or write us at that address to learn how to pay by check. First published exclusively on the DI on February 12, 2003.)

20 years of telling stories not told elsewhere: Last Call at the Butoh Foundry — Asbestos Kan Bids Adieu to the Hijikata Studio; Kasai Divine as “Lovely Jean Paul”

By Maura Nguyen Donohue
Copyright 2003, 2018 Maura Nguyen Donohue

TOKYO — Sunday, January 19’s show from Asbestos Kan, the company started by Butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata, marked the final public performance at the historic Tatsumi Hijikata Memorial Asbestos Dance Studio. Hijikata is considered the creator of Butoh. However, he hadn’t specifically set out to make “Butoh,” per se, when he premiered “Kinjiki (Forbidden Colors)” in 1959. The controversial work was based on Yukio Mishima’s novel of the same name and premiered during a Japan Dance Association showcase for new choreographers. It has since been cited as the first public showing of the performance movement that Hijikata later named Ankoku Butoh, Dance of Darkness. Four decades later, Hijikata’s Ankoku Butoh has become an internationally recognizable form. Tragically, two days after the performance and on the 17th anniversary of Hijikata’s death, the Tokyo District Court auctioned off the birthplace of Japan’s most influential contemporary performance form.

Close to 75 people crammed into the unassuming basement studio (the back of a van parked outside serves as box office and coat check), slowly filling it until the only apparent performance space consisted of a small spot of about 10 square feet in the corner. Agoraphobic response to the crush of the crowd shifted into a growing claustrophobic panic that I was stuck, sitting with my knees pulled up to my chest, without possibility of escape. But these fears were quickly dispelled as a video of abstract, digital bubbles was projected on the back wall, sparse chanting audio drifted through the room, and a kimono-clad woman entered the space. She screamed, the sound of pounding taiko drums followed and “Edo Mandalam” directed by Hironobu Oikawa, began….

(To receive the complete article, subscribers please contact publisher Paul Ben-Itzak at paulbenitzak@gmail.com. Not a subscriber? Subscribe to the DI for one year for just $36 by designating your PayPal payment in that amount to paulbenitzak@gmail.com, or write us at that address to learn how to pay by check. First published exclusively on the DI on February 12, 2003.)

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The DI, Year 1: Eiko & Koma at the American Dance Festival — ‘When Nights Were Dark’

By Byron Woods
Copyright 2000, 2017 Byron Woods

DURHAM, NC — Lyrical, mythic, elusive, and sidereal — let those potent adjectives start the description of “When Nights Were Dark,” Eiko and Koma’s fantastic evening-length work whose expanded version premiered at Durham’s American Dance Festival this week. In this new book of slow and subtle changes, the duo took a mostly willing audience into a different time zone, as usual.

To receive an e-mailed copy of the complete article, first published on June 23, 2000, subscribers please contact publisher Paul Ben-Itzak at paulbenitzak@gmail.com. Not a subscriber? Subscribe to the Dance Insider for just $29.95/year ($99 for institutions gets full access for all your teachers, students, dance company members, etc.) and receive full access to our Dance Insider Archive of 2,000 exclusive reviews by 150 leading dance critics of performances on five continents from 1999 through 2015. Just designate your PayPal payment in that amount to paulbenitzak@gmail.com , or write us at that address to find out about payment by check or in Euros. You can also purchase a complete copy of the Archives for just $49 (individuals) or $99 (institutions) Contact Paul at paulbenitzak@gmail.com .

The DI, Year 1: The Nightclub of his Imagination — Butoh Painting with Kasai

By Asimina Chremos
Copyright 2000, 2017 Asimina Chremos

CHICAGO — I have just returned home from witnessing 57-year-old Butoh artist Akira Kasai, making his Chicago debut at the Dance Center of Columbia College, perform in the nightclub of his imagination. For his piece “Tinctura-2,” the floor of the large black performance space/existential disco was marked with dotted lines of glow tape, sending the eye out and away like a 10-laned highway in space. The lines narrowed towards the back of the space, a simple trick of perspective that added a surprisingly effective illusion of depth. Dressed in black pants, tight black cap, and sleeved tee-shirt, with bleached blond hair and sinewy arms, Kasai reminded me of a Japanese version of Iggy Pop.

To get the rest of the article, first published on March 18, 2000, subscribers please contact publisher Paul Ben-Itzak at paulbenitzak@gmail.com. Not a subscriber? Subscribe to the Dance Insider for just $29.95/year ($99 for institutions gets full access for all your teachers, students, dance company members, etc.) and receive full access to our Dance Insider Archive of 2,000 exclusive reviews by 150 leading dance critics of performances on five continents from 1998 through 2015. Just designate your PayPal payment in that amount to paulbenitzak@gmail.com , or write us at that address to find out about payment by check. You can also purchase a complete copy of the Archives for just $49 (individuals) or $99 (institutions) Contact Paul at paulbenitzak@gmail.com .