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1 What is Butoh? I was broken my pail soul and just standing without thinking, when I watched the butoh perfromance by Tatsumi Hijikata at the first time. It was 1970, at the Seibu Theater in Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. When butoh dancers appeared after for long time hiding under the floor by old tatami with almost dying movement like collapsed people by mercury poisoning by pollution, someone started crying in my deep heart. After 25 years from the experience of watching his performance, I decide to become a butoh dancer. At that time Tatsumi Hijikata had been already dead. But my first impact from butoh performance by Tatsumi Hijikata continued for 25 years in my body and mind. I could just start sinking into the darkness of body and search butoh. I investigated what is butoh, and why have I to start butoh dancing. I moved from Japan to Himalaya India five years before and made small practice place for butoh, because it was too busy and too much information in the modern society, then It was very hard to listen to the silence of my body. I found when the consciousness turns quiet enough and the level goes down as the same as subconscious, I can feel the whole qualia flow in my body very delicately and precisely. And through searching qualia flow in the darkness of body, finally I found the vein of butoh which also Tatsumi Hijikata must find it 40 years before. I created the method how to search and find the seeds of buoth by sinking the darkness of body and how to develop it to one’s own butoh for everyone in these ten years. This is the subbody butoh method which I am going to start teaching at the subbody butoh school Himalaya now. What is butoh? I can say three essentials of Hijikata butoh in short words. 1. To abandon all conditions as a human, and transform to the ‘suijakutai ; collapsed body, which resonates with the dead, spirits, insane, collapsed, handicapped 2. To enter another dimensions from human world and become a survivor of another world 3. The look to the living world from another world as a dead The first essense is to transform into the ‘suijakutai’ which means collapsed body from normal human body. When we open the ability of resonance with the dead, insane, mental and physical handicapped people enough, we can transform into a creature of other dimensions which butoh spirits are living, dancing and dying. Hijikata pursuited the ‘suijakutai’ as an essence of butoh body for life. He said always butoh is trial to expand the concept of human. He try to overcome the narrow concept of human of modern western society which is established with clearance the dead, insane, handicapped from society. To find a new beauty in where existent cultures has not recognize as the beauty is the essential work by Hijikata buoth. Throw out all conditions of human The second essence is to become a creature or being of another dimension. To open another dimension and become a resident of the world. We have to learn how to survive in these unknown dimensions with overcoming many troubles through every days practice. Hijikata said often to his students. “Never forget to abandon all conditions as a human.” This is the most important thing for changing from normal being to Butoh being. If you keep the concept of human strongly, you never transform into other being. By throwing off the narrow concept of modern human, we can enter the another world which is multi-dimensional qualia flows are streaming and changing. The pre-modern people lived there with equality with human and animals, the living and the dead communicate as a friends. Hijikata invented the way of expansion the human concept through opening the abilities to enter the another dimensions and coming back to this modern consensus reality world freely. The third essence is the special look to this living world from another world as a dead. I call this “the look of near life”. It is opposite of “near death” experiences. When we become a resident of the dead world and look to the living wolrd as a dead, we can see that this living world is full of resonance of qualia; light, sound, wind, and so many qualia. How brilliant are they! What special the living world is! We get another sight from daily consensus world through this experiences. It opens another art of human living. ( I will write about this precisely later.) These three transformations are the essential of Hijikata butoh. The other characteristics are not important. So-called white-painted face,
ganimata (O-shape legs), slow motion, and so on, are just surface appearances
of butoh. Because it expanded the concept of human by opening the resonance ability with another dimensions, and opening a new art of human living, buoth was a big invention in the human history. It must be very clear not by the so-called surface appearances. Before Foucault predict “When a new arts of thinking and living are invented, the concept of human will vanish like as letters written on the beach are vanished by ocean waves.” Yes, butoh is the very ocean waves which vanish the old narrow concept of human.
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