painfully intimate

Tomorrow night Przemek and I are going to slip away to watch a Butoh performance. The word Ankoku Butoh - abbreviated to butoh - means Dance of Darkness. The best way to describe it is as a mixture of elements of traditional Japanese theater, modern dance, and mime. It breaks with the established rules of dance and relies heavily on improvisation. Imagine white painted bodies, slow movements, bold heads and contorted postures. The dance evokes images of decay, of fear and desperation, images of eroticism, ecstasy and stillness.A performance I saw years ago involved a slow, terrifying eruption into a moan.

Watching Butoh always makes me slightly uncomfortable. It is striking, and painfully intimate. It reminds the viewer that without a measure of sorrow, there is no life. Just as without the measure of life there is no death.



Image by Ivanalich