* Please note - this is NOT a physical paperback copy of the book.
* You will download a PDF digital version of the book after checkout.
* If you would like to purchase a paperback version, please see instore or contact us.
trance dance - 暗黒舞踊 Ankoku Butoh by King River Press
(also coming in paperback - see store)
About the Collection
31 page PDF version
Some of the poems from trance dance - 暗黒舞踊 Ankoku Butoh:
The Birthing Suite
out of step
unwanted
draped around
the birth of
gasping
craving air
and foliage
sinking into
beginnings
The Ladies Night
peeling back
layers
of the feminine
realisation
of body
senseless
crouching
combing the heavens
the fixated gaze
of madness
Introduction:
Ankoku Butoh or Dance of Darkness is loosely described as a combination of spiritual dance and movement theatre performance. Personal, free and fluid in nature, Butoh is therefore, and perhaps deliberately, not easy to describe.
Initial founder-practitioners, Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno pioneered this radical and unorthodox practice in Japan’s vulnerable post Second World War environment. Straying away from tradition, they pushed against the boundaries of convention with the intention of reinventing the arts.
In the 1950s and 60s, Butoh performances were oftentimes met with shock, outrage and rejection – sometimes deemed so extreme they were stopped or banned. Conservative Japanese culture observers and commentators saw Butoh as a protestive rebellion – a subversive and deliberate assault upon tradition.
Butoh and imitations of it are still practiced today by dancers in Japan and internationally. The modern experience has produced mixed results and consequences ranging from positive to tragic. This work is therefore not a promotion or celebration of Butoh, but an outsider’s creative response to researching and viewing it.
About the Author
Jodie Hawthorne is an Australian-born teacher - transcriber and poet. She holds a Bachelor of Arts, a Grad Dip in Australian Folklife Studies and a Diploma of Family History. Her poetry has been published in a variety of print and online journals.
