"I think if you looked at Earth from space, you'd see that the ones who really hold the reins here are not humans, but insects," Akaji Maro, a master of the expressionist Japanese dance genre butoh, declared in a recent interview for The Japan Times.
Now aged 71, Maro — who still leads the Dairakudakan troupe he founded in 1972 with the aim of fusing butoh and theater — is totally enamored of insects, looking up to them as teachers and deriving endless pleasure from observing their modes of life.
Asked why, he responds: "There's a line from a poem that goes: 'Flies rub their hands together, and their legs, too.' That makes me think they could be praying to or for something, even though we're told they are actually just cleaning themselves. But anyhow, that action has been going on longer than us. They are our elders."