Butoh, Dance of the Dark Soul

“But by an altogether Oriental means of expression, this objective and concrete language of the theater can fascinate and ensnare the organs. It flows into the sensibility. Abandoning Occidental usages of speech, it turns words into incantations. It extends the voice. It utilizes the vibrations and qualities of the voice. It wildly tramples rhythms underfoot. It pile-drives sounds. It seeks to exalt, to benumb, to charm, to arrest the sensibility. It liberates a new lyricism of gesture which, by its precipitation or its amplitude in the air, ends by surpassing the lyricism of words. It ultimately breaks away from the intellectual subjugation of the language, by conveying the sense of a new and deeper intellectuality which hides itself beneath the gestures and signs, raised to the dignity of particular exorcisms.”

–Antonin Artaud, from The Theater of Cruelty (First Manifesto): The Theater and Its Double, 1938.

10.21. filed under: art. history. people. play.


that’s Brent Spiner, as Mr. Data from Star Trek, The Next Generation! I’m guessing his emotion implant reacted badly to radio waves from his cell phone.

posted on 10.21 at 10:24 PM.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)


Oh, I remember Sankai Juku was in the news some years ago. They had a fatal fall from a building. Snopes lists this incident along with a bevy of other performers who died onstage or near it:
http://www.snopes.com/horrors/freakish/onstage.asp

“Yoshiuki Takada (died 10 September 1985)

The Sankai Juku Dance Company of Toyko had been performing The Dance Of Birth And Death on the side of Seattle’s Mutual Life building when Takada’s rope broke and he plunged six stories to his death. The film of his demise was shown on the nightly news.”

I’ve seen that footage. He’s hanging there, slowly unfolding himself as if from a chrysalis, then he just drops out of frame. Bummer.

posted on 10.21 at 10:39 PM.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)


wow! Thanks for this!!!

posted on 10.22 at 04:32 PMachilles3


@Tom: Wow, that’s horrible. Turns out that the photographer who took most of the shots in this post, Ethan Hoffman, also fell to his demise not too long after the book was published. Through a skylight in Newark I think.

Always sad when you search someone’s name and the first result is a N.Y. Times Obituary.

@Ach: My pleasure.

posted on 10.23 at 10:41 PMjmorrison

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