I'm analytical so I need things to balance life in direct experience which resists analysis. I fell into the Portland modern dance crowd early. Modern dance girlfriend and all. After a few years, it lost its newness to me.
Then I discovered butoh through Sankai Juku and a Montreal performer with Zoviet France.
That Montreal performer combined butoh, Hindu temple dance and Hawaiian dance in her own style. It was a big impact on me. I had to speak to her and did. Her first language was French, and I have no French. But backstage she told this story I relate as shorthand for the koan that is butoh. Her teacher had this image. Imagine your body as only its bones. The bones are made of glass. In each joint is a flower. Improvise on that.
To Sankai Juku, unbeknownst to me, a friend was the producer of Sankai Juku in Pioneer Square, Seattle. My exposure to Sankai Juku was the second in their comeback post-Pioneer Square. At the end of the performance I felt an imediate visceral response across my scalp of chills and sparks; the entire audience was up in a standing ovation. It was not the usual few and checking to see if you should join the ovation. There was a collective rise by everyone. Somehow Pioneer Square was subliminally encoded in their performance. I did not even know that story at the time.
I always try to see Sankai Juku in Seattle because the audience has a strong emotional relationship. You feel it in the audience. I went on to study butoh in the flesh in Seattle, Japan, Portland, and San Francisco and see performances in each adding NYC and Denver.
Vangeline https://www.vangeline.com/ is a French butoh player in NYC. She has written a book on feminism, neuroscience https://www.vangeline.com/research, and butoh. It is a good read and complement to my discussion with Kazuo Ohno in Kyoto.
He said that the male originators were so engrossed in creation, they could not comprehend how women performers would bring their body experience to it. They were discovering butoh in their own male bodies.
Women did and do, ongoing. Many of us know trans persons who will bring their own to movement.
Even in the early days women such as Nakajima Natsu who works with intellectually disabled performers today; Yoko Ashikawa who brought a warm tone to butoh - she suggested an image our senile grandmother; Hiroko Tamano, who brings the darkest images to cute; Eiko Otake from NYC, who had a live-work in the World Trace Center and made free commemorative performance from that - she also suggests, with family, teach them to pretend to be sleeping to get them to sleep, then in butoh, dance as if you are asleep; Yumiko Yoshioka bringing butoh to a castle in Japan. I've studied with each. There are many American and international women in butoh. The Tamano legendary sushi restaurant, I patronzed in the Mission, and their home, was creative cradle to many female butoh friends.
One of my favorates, Dairakudakan is half women performers. I will travel to see them, have done, and have taken a workshop with Maro which challened me. I was also Portland host to Akira Kasai.
For whatever reason, Portland dance producers have been allergic to butoh. Bringing a group from Japan is expensive, but Seattle, SF, LA, Denver, NYC, and Vancouver BC do it.
Today Vangeline gives a free Internet talk - "Where the arts meet neuroscience - A virtual expert talk with Prof. Dr. Judith Revers and artist Vangeline."
"What happens inside our bodies and minds while performing and participating in the arts, and what are the mental and psychological benefits of it? In this last virtual lecture of the year, Prof. Dr. Judith Revers, Medical School Hamburg, dives into the field of performance art and dance with New York-based artist Vangeline, who’s involved in artistic research with neuroscientific methods around the Japanese artform Butoh. Together, they will be investigating interdisciplinary research in Arts and Neurosciences and its implications for the Arts Therapies."
"The Slowest Wave/Butoh and The Brain is an art-science performance-research study. This new study investigates the brain dynamics of dancers while they are performing Butoh, a postmodern dance style that originated in Japan, through the use of electroencephalography (EEG) to record the participants’ brain waves. The study is a collaboration between the New York-based Vangeline Theater dance company, the Laboratory for Noninvasive Brain-Machine Interface Systems, IUCRC BRAIN Center, The Rockefeller University, and the Neurobiology of Social Communication Lab (funded by the City University of New York, Rockefeller University and New York University).
In collaboration with neuroscientists Sadye Paez and Constantina Theofanopoulou, neuro engineer Jose ‘Pepe’ Contreras-Vidal, and composer Ray Sweeten, Vangeline choreographed a 60-minute ensemble butoh piece, which is uniquely informed by the protocol established for a scientific pilot study researching the impact of butoh on brain activity. For the groundbreaking art-science study, dancers' brain activity will be recorded at the University of Houston, Texas, with real-time visualization by multimedia artist Badie Khaleghian of the dancers' neural activity. Results will then be disseminated in scientific journals.
Vangeline and Sweeten have built on a 20-year history of creative collaboration with a soundscape that is informed by techniques of brainwave entrainment (techniques that affect consciousness through sound). The Slowest Wave investigates through the use of scalp EEG how brain waves during butoh dancing compare to those emitted during other conscious or unconscious motor behaviors, such as speaking or meditating. Moreover, the study will elucidate the functional neural networks of the dancers and the neural synchrony within and between them. This project is meant to foster connections and understanding between dancers, artists, scientists, engineers, and audiences from around the world."
Butoh is not for everyone to like. The Blackwood Productions documentary Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis is an accessible introduction. Portland's Mizu at Headwaters theater is retiring. Seattle's Daipan Butoh has events several times a year.
Modern dance and neuroscience talk online. It is https://www.arts-and-social-change.de/virtuelle-kurzvortraege/ which your browser can translate. They are using Microsoft Team viewer. Teams Meeting-ID: 388 741 885 184 Code: yC9wdR.. 8:30AM Pacific time. Free
