#16) Japanese Dance Festivals

Japanese Dance Festivals are crazier than bat shit.

I realize that this is only my second post and it is also about the Japanese. We could have been a bit more economical and lumped Japan all into one category but that didn’t happen so you will just have to deal.

Recently I saw two performances of butoh, a uniquely Japanese style of modern dance developed post-war to help re-establish the national identity and hegemony of a defeated Japan. Or so they say. Do some digging and you’ll realize that the first piece of butoh was about the taboo of homosexuality and involved a live chicken.

Butoh is a style of dance that, like everything else Japanese, is not quite entirely unlike dance. Music? Check. Rhythmic movement to that music? Check. Naked Japanese men painted white and beating themselves rapidly on the head while shrieking? Check. Butoh has a lot of slow stress-poses as well, focusing less on what we regular people would call dancing such as rapid footwork or even a little pop-and-lock, and more on deliberate and intricate control of the body as a whole.

Which works well for the skinny Japanese but not so much for the sweaty hairy white men that were also participating, which just goes to show you that the Japanese are special people.



And speaking of Japanese dancers, in this same festival Eiko and Koma performed one of their classic pieces from a few decades ago entitled “Rust.” We here at TTACTBS have been thrilled that SYTYCD has been showcasing excellent and innovative talent from the contemporary dance world and we thought with the introduction of things like krumping and Bollywood to the competition, this season would be ripe for butoh. And what better way introduce the world to Japanese modern movement than to have two masters like Eiko and Koma perform a seminal piece of dance. Here we imagine how this conversation might go:

SYTYCD: Eiko and Koma, we would love for you to perform on our show.
E&K: We shall perform “Rust”, a seminal work in which we dance as if we were rust on a fence.
SYTYCD: Hmmm, rust you say?
E&K: We will not so much as dance as lean against a chain-link fence and move slowly towards each other for twenty minutes.
SYTYCD: Hmmm, with intricate footwork, perhaps?
E&K: Not really, since we will be upside down on our heads the whole time.
SYTYCD: Dressed as rust?
E&K: Naked.
SYTYCD: But the music –
E&K: No.
SYTYCD: No music?
E&K: The creaking of the fence beneath our creeping, naked bodies is out music.
SYTYCD: You’re crazier than bat shit.
E&K: Us?
Mary Murphy: Hot tamale train!

Bat Shit Hall of Fame - Running with the Bulls

The dudes in this photograph running from angry bulls during last week's Festival of San Fermin are crazier than bat shit.

So much crazier than bat shit that we feel its almost as useless to write about this craziness as it is to elaborate on the finer points of Michael Jackson because really, what are we telling you that you don't already know?

Well, the first thing we can share, having actually taken the above photo, is that semi-drunken men gather along the bull-running course at an alarmingly early hour for the 8 a.m. three-minute "oh-shit-fest" that is the actual event.

At around 7 a.m., the street is still littered with empty cups, beer bottles and spilled drinks and various and sundry shady characters, but then cops with berets ferret them away and a very traditional street-cleaning truck takes to the course to pick up the refuse to at least minimize the damage.

By minimize the damage we mean try to make it so that people don't slip on actual trash while they RUN FROM SEVERAL TONS OF ANGRY BULLS who had been sleeping peacefully until some asshole shot a canon near their heads and some dudes in green shirts decided to heard them along the course... Yeah. They make sure the people and bulls don't slip. Much!Except when that one did, throwing the crowd for a loop and eventually head-butting at a tourist with a camera. Thankfully, the bull wound up hitting the wooden beam in front of him instead of the actual tourist, who probably has a much cooler photograph than we do.

(This was captured on Spanish television, which the Spaniards thought incredibly amusing....)

The day we watched the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona, some poor Irish sucker almost wound up getting a hoof on the lower spine. In the initial television footage, it looked like he had just become either paraplegic or dead. Later shots showed that his pants had actually been torn down, so what looked like his ass was actually the space just below his balls. Where the several-thousand-pound bull just stepped in a fit of rage.

Right where your spine should have been, dude. Wow. You should be prayin' to Jesus right about now.

If we need to go on about why this is in the Bat Shit Hall of Fame, perhaps you too should attempt the Running of the Bulls, and let us know how it goes.

If you really think about it, with their ubiquitous white clothes and red scarves, the people and city of Pamplona are crazier than bat shit too for hosting this thing, but God bless España.