It is tempting to look at the new Dairakudakan production, "Kanzen-naru Hitobito (Complete People)," as being in some way connected to the title. Searching for meaning in butoh performances has always been a mad sport, though, and the premiere by the largest butoh company extant, at Tokyo's Art Sphere on Sept. 7, increased the odds against.

Akaji Maro and Dairakudakan in "Tenpu Tenshiki"

At almost two hours in length, and with the most diverse, motley crew of performers possible, "Complete People" reaffirms director Akaji Maro's instinctive grasp of theater and the possibility of making performances abstract in conception and immediate in execution.

The meaning of it all, he says, lies closer to his theme tenpu tenshiki, which he interprets as "a gathering of personal brightening." Of all the current crop of aging butoh gurus, masters, disciples and hangers-on, Maro is the most disarmingly direct. For him, there is little of the mystical about the performance and experience of the collection of surreal vignettes that has come to be called butoh. Rather, it is an "experiment that enables us to survive in a more human way."

The director intends "Complete People" to serve as a reminder that no humans are inherently perfect or superior. Butoh dance is ideal as a structure for Maro's philosophy. It emphasizes weakness and frailty, a constant hovering on the edge of mental or physical collapse, and all in the ragged costumes of kimono and scraps of material that served the company so well in its early cavortings in public places more than 30 years ago.

The contrasts in the work are dramatic, against a backdrop of a huge revolving piece of wooden and mirrored panels, with four triangular sculptures hanging at the corners. One performer in a suit symbolizes the butoh world's distaste for the "straight" people who live by the rules and rush around trying to keep busy. His protagonist is a woman in green, possibly Nature, or the Earth, who caresses the stage and some chairs on it to the gently skewed piano of Shuichi Chino's increasingly dissonant score. One of the profound blessings about butoh to date has been the absence of chairs as props for movement, so beloved of modern dance, so let's hope this is just a one-off.

The piece develops from its rather straight theater opening to a scene of four women in wooden geta clogs, grimacing through a kind of squatting flamenco section, geta clacking across the stage in manic lunges, as always with Dairakudakan work, strictly in unison and controlled by grunts, yelps and hisses from the leader. The work gets good mileage out of the Geta Girls when they reappear later to scream everybody off the stage and well near out of the venue as well.

From the traditional butoh band of scavengers Maro takes us into a psychedelic future, as three men in black raincoats and shades do mock Britney Spears routines holding three rag-doll women in white dresses and red bows. This segues into a surreal waltz of CIA operatives and butoh women dancers with delayed collapse syndrome. The sudden silence at the end of the scene as the clashing score comes to an abrupt stop does not quite come off as a coup de theatre.

But excitement peaks as a disco ball descends on the stage and we enter the great "snowmen" scene. With styrofoam spheres attached to the joints of their arms and legs, five male dancers take over the stage in a stunningly visual scene.

As the disco ball sends spherical glittery reflections scrambling over the walls of the auditorium and the audience, the dancers weave in sinuous processions, heads adorned with mirrored plastic squares right through the center of their faces and the backs of their heads like an extended mohawk, with a backward facing Sphinx mirror profile at the top. These exquisite, extravagant snowball men exit squealing and emitting ghostlike sounds that elicited more snickers than shivers from the spectators.

Maro performs a slow solo in a long red dress, others creeping around him, his arm raised in his signature entwining salute, an old diva dancing to a dissonant piano. His dance is much gentler in this production, and calmer than ever before. The piece ends with the old butoh trick of transfixing bodies by spotlight to emotive high chords, in a great picture framed by the revolving, reflecting set. The finale is the customary apocalyptic tableau to over-reaching emoting from score and lighting.

For audiences overseas, the production Dairakudakan takes on its overseas tour from January, "Kaiin no Uma," has plenty of the old raw and raunchy camel (rakuda) in it. It opens at the beginning of February for a three-night run at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and travels to the American Dance Festival in North Carolina, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Texas and Minnesota before ending in New Jersey. This is a significant tour for Dairakudakan, and signals a global reincarnation for the company.

But since Maro considers butoh to be "the art of being born," butoh-watchers may look in vain for any new influences.