Tag - butoh

 
 

BUTOH

Wozme, founded by dancer and choreographer Wakaba Kohei, is composed of Kana Kitty, Ami Ishii, Akane Watanabe and Natsuki. Its aim is to inject elegance and beauty, traits traditionally associated with femininity, into the sometimes grotesque art form of butoh dance.
CULTURE / Stage / Longform
Sep 29, 2024
Wozme, an all-women dance troupe, wants to move the needle in butoh
The art form’s younger dancers are experimenting with long-standing approaches to the choreography, marketing and image of this captivating piece of Japanese culture.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Feb 28, 2020
Deconstructing the avant-garde art of butoh with Taketeru Kudo
As Taketeru Kudo takes a new approach to butoh, the dancer says the art is gaining a strong following overseas.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
Mar 24, 2018
'Portrait of Ohno Yoshito': A deeper look at butoh's mythical figure
Here, Inuhiko Yomota takes on Yoshito Ohno (born 1938), the "mythical figure" of butoh — a genre so undefinable that poet Miyoshi Toyoichiro once called it "a dance, performance, acting, or whatever you like." Donald Richie (1924-2013) wrote of his friend, and founder of butoh, Tatsumi Hijikata (1928-86),...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Mar 15, 2018
Dairakudakan's 'unearthly' butoh meets a tortured Russian tale
Following a January press conference in which the New National Theatre, Tokyo, announced that Dairakudakan, one of the world's leading butoh companies, would be staging two performances of "Tsumi to Batsu" ("Crime and Punishment") in March, troupe founder Akaji Maro delivered a triumphant statement.
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Nov 29, 2017
Takao Kawaguchi pays homage to butoh icon Kazuo Ohno by retracing his every move
To see a performance of butoh, the Japanese dance form in which the body twists and contorts on stage, is to almost feel like you're being transported to another world. And noone was more otherworldly than the late Kazuo Ohno (1906-2010).
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHY DID YOU LEAVE JAPAN?
Oct 21, 2017
Cultural disorientation is dancer Yumi Umiumare's artistic drive
At a certain level, the act of resettling overseas unsettles the idea of home itself. It ruptures the narrative of belonging that we construct through attachments to people and places. For the immigrant, home is no longer an immutable fact, but a space between memory and desire — always elsewhere....
Japan Times
COMMUNITY / Our Lives / WHY DID YOU LEAVE JAPAN?
Jun 17, 2017
Performance artist Eiko Otake is a stranger in New York
Move to rest, sleep, and dream. Move to pass time, bloom, and linger.' These are the opening lines of performing artist Eiko Otake's 'Delicious Movement Manifesto.'
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jul 7, 2016
New butoh venue aims for intimacy
Butoh has found a permanent home in Kyoto. Appropriately, for a form of dance that originated in Japan but has flown under the radar here, that home is a tiny 154-year-old kura, or storehouse, hidden down an alley and squeezed between a medical college and residential buildings slap bang in the middle...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Books
May 28, 2016
'Butoh': the dance of death and disease
The first dance in Japan may well have been a mythological striptease. In one of the most famous episodes from Japanese folklore, the goddess Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto entices Amaterasu Omikami, the sun deity, to come out of hiding by ripping off her clothes and dancing. The elemental irreverence of this...
Japan Times
LIFE / Style & Design
May 30, 2015
Sayoko Yamaguchi, an enigma to the end
You may not know the name, but there is a good chance you know the face. As Clara Bow, Greta Garbo and Twiggy were iconic of their times, Sayoko Yamaguchi was everywhere in the 1970s. Even if you weren't a dedicated follower of fashion, it would have been difficult to avoid her cool gaze, which appeared...
Japan Times
CULTURE / Stage
Jun 25, 2014
Insects inspire butoh master Maro
"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.

Longform

Wozme, founded by dancer and choreographer Wakaba Kohei, is composed of Kana Kitty, Ami Ishii, Akane Watanabe and Natsuki. Its aim is to inject elegance and beauty, traits traditionally associated with femininity, into the sometimes grotesque art form of butoh dance.
Wozme, an all-women dance troupe, wants to move the needle in butoh