#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!