Renowned butoh dancer, award-winning actor, choreographer and agriculturist Min Tanaka has tried hard to escape international stardom.
Tanaka, now aged 62, has spent the past two decades in the depths of the Yamanashi countryside, questioning the very thing that made him famous: "I don't care if people don't even think what I do now is dance." But even there, his fame got the better of him, and in 2000 he terminated a dance workshop because participants were corrupting its purpose.
Only this summer has he decided to resurrect his workshops, due to an avalanche of inquiries from across the world — not just from dancers of all genres, but also fans. "(In the earlier workshops,) participants were using the experience as a career step to make business out of it, even when I wasn't," frowns Tanaka, who is recognized internationally as the pioneer of butoh second only to its principal founder Tatsumi Hijikata. "Some even asked for a certificate to prove that they'd learned butoh from Min Tanaka, but I wasn't even trying to teach dance. I was just helping them to find a method of expression."