BUTOH AND ANCIENT GREEK DANCE
By ANNA LAZOU
Butoh, the new form of aesthetic movement created by the modern dancer, Tatsumi Hijikata, in
1959 in Japan, tried to rehabilitate the separation of man from nature and his personal identity.
Butoh, which means dance (bu) and step (toh), searches for the physical body in the dancer and
is different from both Japanese and Western dance. Butoh dance does not require a specific
technical training but is based on the development of the senses, while the body itself becomes
the centre of expression. In parallel with the awareness of the self it develops the
consciousness of as well as contact with the other dancers. Butoh dance is an exclusively
improvisational dance, as the butoh dancer tries to react to the impressions of the moment, to
space, climate and the environment.
Kazuo Ohno, one of the founders of butoh dance, states, while guiding his class, (as described
by Jean Viala and Nourit Masson-Sekine in their book Butoh: Shades of Darkness) – states,
“My art is an art of improvisation. It is dangerous. To succeed, one must first reach the very
depths of the human soul, and then, express it ...”
What butoh proposes as starting point for the dancer’s preparation is the "dead body" as a
theme of improvisation. “What could be the life of that which is dead? It is this impossibility
that we must create”, Ohno suggests and adds, “for dance, we must not try to control the body,
but to let the soul breathe life into the flesh”. His instructions to the student go like this: "Be
free! Let go!" Being free is not doing what we want or what we think. On the contrary, it
means being liberated from thought and will.
Ohno, although he will sometimes correct a pose or explain the elementary movement of the
body, he generally avoids imposing the slightest technique; it is up to the student to create
whatever techniques are necessary. Ohno is there to open up the imagination, to help discover
the soul. He guides the student so that he can become like "the creator of the world, he who has
no identity, he who existed before the appearance of the individual. Then, all is but a game."
On the other hand butoh dancers intend to harmonize with nature, invoking the memory of our
supposed origin from previous forms of existence, while they also try to base their dance on a
biological and religious background and content.
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Atsushi Takenouchi, the famous butoh dancer and choreographer who has been working on his
own "Jinen Butoh" style since 1986, feels that dancing in harmony with nature has brought
back the memories which were sleeping, in his DNA. He uses the memories of once having
been a tree, grass, an animal, wind, soil, fire or water in his dance. He also transfers while
performing on stage the feeling of life and of the earth harmonizing with the environment.
Takenuchi supports that “The body is a container for one soul, which cannot be changed by
anything”, and that dancing with this kind of body is a common culture for all human beings.
Performing this primitive dance in the space of nature where people have gathered together
since ancient time, where music and dance were born from prayer, is an important ceremony
which traces back to where we came from and leads to where we are going.”
Improvisational elements on the other hand are recognized in a wide series of ancient Greek
dances, since homeric time and up to late antiquity. It characterizes mainly samples of
individual dances of a free, liberating and mimetic nature. In tragedy and comedy, there is
alteration of the strictly formalistic dance schemata of the chorus with a sort of freedom of
dancing expression of the protagonist in certain solo pieces or during the kommos (the lament).
In most examples of ancient Greek dances there is a connection with deities and religious
ceremonies in general. Demeter and Dionysus, figures of prehistoric origin, are mostly dancing
and ritualistic deities. Another particular characteristic of these gods is their relation to Hades
and metamorphosis, both characteristics of homeric dances. Hades and the Underworld are
symbols of a large family of metaphors of ancient Greek culture concerning a view of space
and man’s orientation to it. This conception of reality as consisting of an upper and a lower la
er of the world and human awareness of this view of reality are paralleled with belief in the
importance of subterrestrial spaces and caves - with their specific successive alteration of light
and shadow - for the storage of wealth and for the conservation of life. They constituted certain
standard beliefs of the homeric man and were involved in his dancing expressions. Belief in
the transformative power of fire and water, belongs to the same category of beliefs as those
above, corresponding to therapeutic and liberating procedures and practices.
The human being is considered as a micro cosmos in the universe. In several myths of archaic
origin we have the phenomenon of the transformation of some heroes into stars or the
connection of deities and gods with heavenly bodies. On the other hand the main starting point
of the technique of ancient Greek dance is walking, as the basis of metric and musical strucure,
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rhythm and speech. The origin of ancient Greek dance may be placed in the basic as well as
revolutionary phenomenon of standing and walking and their varieties (running, jumping).
According to the inspirer of butoh dance, Tatsumi Hijikata, butoh dance means an unveiling of
the inner life and contrary to other forms of dances, its movements are not derived from a fixed
technique and are far removed from conventions. The dancer of butoh should dance in an
absurd spirit as a mirror, which thaws fear.
He also stated that “Western dance begins with its feet firmly planted on the ground whereas
butoh begins with a dance wherein the dancer tries in vain to find his feet. What has happened
to the tucked-in feet?”
The way butoh dance develops touches the inner reality of the human being – the origin of fear
in man, the need for rebirth and for a new identiy: Hijikata also showed a totally new
perspective in dance when he asserted: “When I begin to wish I were crippled - even though I
am perfectly healthy - or rather that I would have been better off born a cripple, that is the first
step towards butoh."
Hijikata related dance with a primordial experience of suffering: “When one considers the
body in relation to dance, it is then that one truly realizes what suffering is”, he said, and
continued, “No matter how much we search for it from the outside, there is no way we can find
it without delving into ourselvers”. The dancer, through the butoh spirit, confronts the origins
of his fears, as Hijikata was saying, butoh is a dance which crawls towards the bowels of the
earth. An interesting idea is the connection of butoh unceasing improvisation with the recall of
memories – pure body memories, as Hijikata was asking, “What is memory if not the sum of
all those things that have been eaten, erased, eliminated - in a word, all that has ceased to exist?
And is not the world made so as to attend to that sum?”
To return to ancient Greek traditions and Greek culture more generally, food and eating are
connected with memory as a repetitive motto in myths and folk traditions. Plouton, (cf. the
greek word ploutos meaning wealth) the king of Hades, dominates in the dark place of storage
of wealth and other precious goods and possessions. From the sacredness and importance
attributed to this event, it can be assumed that food was considered to possess a
transformational function as well as a mental and psychological effect, a connection therefore
with memory and emotions.
As for the identification of dance with the natural world, we know that a representative
category of ancient Greek dances refers to the physical and animal world, imitating sometimes
many and various animals’ behaviour or refers to flowers and trees and to the processes of
cultivation of plants necessary for nutrition and survival.
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Butoh dance is presented as a dance interested in the grotesque and absurd qualities of human
expression, as well as for the nostalgic search for a primitive society, a timeless universal
world, before and beyond civilization. Ohno explains in his class that the illogical is liberating,
that the impossible opens new paths.
A favourite theme is the relationship between male and female, may denote either the conflict
between man and woman or the harmonic relationship between these two opposing poles, or,
normally, the archetypical pair of mother and child, sometimes with their reunion after a tragic
separation, or their search for their lost unity after death and loss.
In ancient drama on the other hand we can see the development of an internal relationship of
movement, space and dance. Dance, choros, therefore means collective musical action, in
contrast with orchesis, which signifies particularly individual or solo dancing. The space of the
orchestra, came as the result of the archetypical cyclical arrangement of the dithyrambos
dancers in relation to – opposition and/or dialogue with the exarchon, the leader of the dance.
Around the orchestra we have the koilon, with the position of the audience, as a physical
geometric expansion of the acting agents space, creating therefore, a natural relationship, both
organized and continuously reorganized and transformed through the centuries, demonstrating
the movement of the human soul.
Butoh is internally connected with space and time. Just as the spider creates and weaves its
web, butoh creates its own space identifying immobility and movement as dance and not
necessarily what is conventionally considered as dance. Butoh establishes a kind of balance
through situations of unbalance and has rejected the social standards of beauty and ugliness or
morally good and bad, in order to substitute for them an uninhibited continuity of movement
characterizing all natural phenomena, perhaps only with the exception of human situations.
Butoh which has a definite and strong philosophical background remains however a
performing art, in front of an audience. Each dance without losing its internal content, ought
always to find ways of transmitting to the spectator what it has to communicate. This can only
be actualized and controlled in action during the performance. Which brings up two key points:
the first is that much butoh movement is derived from an inner image that the dancer holds
during the dance. The movements then come from impulses created by the image rather than
conscious choices by the dancer. The other issue this raises is that the audience cannot usually
discern what this internal image is - nor should it. The audience reads their own story in the
actions of the dancers.
The close connection of body with earth that butoh develops reconstructs the lost identity of
the psychophysical whole of the dancer. The starting point is the body while the agent as
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subject withdraws itself in order to let something else, an inner self, dance through the body.
One of the many ideas that constellate around butoh is the concept of the empty body. This
refers to an opening up of space in the body to allow oneself room to be moved. To move
without conscious intention or desire for self-expression. The aim of butoh dance is not to
realize a concept but to create those preconditions necessary for the emergence of the dance of
the body that already exists in the dancer.
We observe and follow the body just like as if it were playing a game or dancing a folk or
traditional dance or participating in anniversary festivities and celebrations throughout the
year. A corresponding conclusion has been drawn out of my research into the meaning of the
Dionysian element in Greek dance culture, diachronically : Starting from the philosophical
investigation of concepts like traditional, physical and historical I have attempted to identify
the dionysian element of the Greek dances and to demonstrate that the human body as the locus
communes of the morphologial, biological and psychological aspects of dance can be also an
operator of moral, as well as social and political dimensions.
Descriptions on the basis of texts as well as historical and archaeological testimony can help us
to formulate a vocabulary of movements and situations of dance that characterize the dionysian
element. But only the actual, live participation to a social language and a community tradition
of dance can provide proof of its therapeutic and transformative function. Ecstatic dances,
ritual and initiation performances with orgiastic and mystery content and character,
zoomorphic dances are the main forms of dionysian culture existing worldwide, associated
with various fertility cults and deities. The ecstatic character – losing of oneself through
movement and musical patterns – epitomizes the main functions of these dances and rituals
where the dances appear.
Jerzi Growtoski said that to have a desire to express oneself means that one is divided - part of
you commands, part of you obeys. True expression, he said, is that of a tree. This idea is
resonant with butoh. Around the tree on the other hand either as reference to the physical body
of the tree in the center of the action (
–
–
), or as the play around
the tree – or, as in tree worshiping religions – the ceremonial dialogue with the tree – ancient
Greek dance and drama evolved.
Butoh, apart from being a performing art and a specific aesthetic event – quite spectacular – is
also a form of psychosomatic therapy and kinesiotherapy. Tamah Nakamura has ascertained
that butoh psychosomatic action begins from 1) self – perception, 2) inter – subjective
awareness and leads as a consequence to 3) social consciousness. It can be a form of
conscientization, that is, raising of awareness of the reality of the sociocultural structures
combined with action for the transformation of reality.
The therapeutic function of dance and drama in the ancient Greek world is apparent and widely
recognized. The dionysiac element in movement, more particularly, is therapeutic both for its
bio psychic and physiological balancing functions and effects and for its sociopolitical
dimensions.
The body in Butoh practice, then, is a vehicle for intervention and transformation of embodied
political structures, it allows a specific interaction between structure and agency using
improvisation throughout everyday life and practices. The individual agent adopts a collective
attitude in thought and employs it in action. New forms of existence, practice and movement
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have to be found in order to restore the structural inequality of human bodies, that is
continuously reproduced through the centuries in the estranged forms of our practical life.
When we learn to move in a new way we will learn to “speak” through movement and enter
into a true dialogue with the other beings in the world. In this way we compensate for the
agony of our body in everyday practice, for the sorrow of Demeter, the pain of Persephone and
the tearing up of Dionysus. As we keep on searching our body in this way, a rupture with the
past will replace what was previously controlled and suppressed by the usual form of labor and
will permit the spelling out of the new word, with a very different quality than before.
Philosophy of dance leads to the creation of a “text” that concretizes the meaning that the
individual attributes to his movement experience and extends consciousness. This therapy as
an outcome of the butoh educational procedures is therefore the restoration of those parts of
ourselves, which were destroyed by todays society and kept in the dark, those parts that are not
accepted as knowledge. Butoh gives a place to the oppressed emotions through unstructured
movement by exploring new and different ways of moving in our lives.
This dialectic and complete relationship between emotions, movement and word has been
proposed in an exemplary way by the chorus in ancient Greek drama.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Adler, J., The collective body, in the American Journal of Dance Therapy, 18(2), 1996, p. 81-94
Fraleigh, S., Dancing into darkness: Butoh, Zen and Japan, Pittsburgh, PA, Pittsburgh University
Press, 1999.
Kasai, T. & Takeuchi, M., Mind-body learning by the Butoh dance method, in Proceedings from the
36th Annual Conference of American Dance Therapy Association, Raleigh, North Carolina, October,
2001,
. 11-14.
Orchesis, Texts on Ancient Greek Dance, A. Lazou - A. Raftis - M.Borowska, Ways of Life
Publications & Greek Dances Theatre “Dora Stratou”, Athens, 2003
Viala, Jean & Masson-Sekine, Nourit, butoh: Shades of Darkness, Tokyo, 1988
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