Flower-Secret and the Art of American Butoh
The Vangeline Theater and Modern Butoh Performance
Butoh, a combination of theatre and dance, was born in Japan in 1959 with the performance of Kinjiki (Hidden Colors). That year was the beginning of the protests against the Japan-US Security Treaty after World War 2 and the atom bomb that ended it. Butoh has always been a style of theatre closely tied to protest, as well as death. The style spread and by the 1970s it had morphed into what we now know as Butoh; performers in white makeup performing slow, restrained movements and avant-garde set and costume design. This white makeup is part of Butoh’s aesthetic as the “dance of the dead” in which the dead are symbolically reanimated to perform. Tatsumi Hijikata, one of the pioneers of Butoh, “talked about the dead dancing with him” (Goldberg). Even the name “ankoku butoh” means “the dance of utter darkness” (Andrews); death is at the core of Butoh.
Interestingly, long before Butoh had even been imagined, during and after the Plague in Europe, images of death increased in popularity and became very common. Images of skeletons mingling among living mortals or stepping in a “Danse Macabre” abounded, and death was a common theme in most art. So perhaps it is no surprise that after the devastation of the nuclear bombings in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, after the loss and socio-political turmoil that came with the treaty and Westernizing influence that followed, Japanese people turned to art to express their grief. Butoh was conceived to be a form of theatre that confronted the most difficult of emotions. This can make it uncomfortable for some to watch as it “deals with the dark side of human beings and reflects things that people don’t want to face” (Vangeline). Historically Butoh has been met with mixed reviews and limited acceptance, and it continues to exist in the realm of avant-garde theatre rather than mainstream (something that perhaps is innate to its nature as a form of protest). Butoh has spread beyond Japan, however, taking hold in “the United States…Europe, Africa, and Latin America” (Vangeline).
The transplanting of a Japanese art form into a western culture brings up questions of cultural ownership, especially as “there are [currently] more non-Japanese Butoh performers than Japanese dancers” (Vangeline). However the general attitude is that “Butoh belongs to everyone” (Vangeline) because it does not reflect something innately Japanese or American, but innately human. Butoh is a return to the primal, to base emotions and instincts. Performances inspire fear, compassion, and wonder by presenting something that reminds us of our innermost selves.
That is not to say that the same Butoh is performed in Japan as America. The Vangeline Theatre Company, a Butoh performance company based in New York, has adapted Butoh into a “uniquely American style” (Vangeline). The difference lies not necessarily in the messages conveyed, but in the packages they come in; in order to most successfully affect an audience, the performance must be adapted to their understanding. In the case of Butoh, this occurs through body language. “The Japanese are much more intensely conscious of body language and physical gestures than Westerners are,” said Vangeline in an interview with The Tricycle, “How low do you bow? Who goes through the door first? Japanese Butoh dancers have used a lot of that Japanese body language as a jumping-off point in their work.”
Vangeline similarly finds “jumping-off points” in American and Western culture around which to frame her work. I recently had the privilege of witnessing Vangeline’s style of Butoh in Flower-Secret, a dual performance by each Vangeline and Tetsuro Fukuhara (joined by Sindy Butz), in New York. The stage was empty except for a ring of flowers, a piece of twine, and a screen stretched across the back wall. The show began with no light save that cast from the emergency exit signs; in the shifting dark a figure emerged and moved toward the center of the ring of flowers. This figure was Vangeline, dressed in a simple white dress, face painted white with small red accents, and hair colored gray. As Vangeline performed, moving so slowly it was almost a surprise to realize she had changed positions, images of flowers were projected on the screen at the back. At one point a disco ball began to spin and Vangeline swayed slowly to Elvis’ “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” her mouth moving as if to speak or scream. The contrast between Elvis’ song and the previous discordant sound — one could barely call it music — and the juxtaposition of the lively, vibrant flowers with the disjointed movement discomfit the audience, creating a space in which everything is called into question.
Unlike traditional theatre, which allows us to settle into our seats and follow a more or less familiar story, Butoh prevents the audience from ever feeling this security. There are no words of explanation, no overarching narrative structure to guide interpretation. The music and movement do not follow patterns we know; the set and costumes are too minimal to tell us where or when the performance takes place. Watching the figure onstage, searching constantly for concrete meaning, one feels transported to a sort of liminal space, somewhere that exists only within the dark, unseen confines of the theatre. This inability to pin down and clearly explain the performance plays on themes of meaning and meaninglessness that are common in modern American pop culture.
It seems a growing number of Americans these days are drawn to existentialism, and in particular to absurdism. American comedy abounds with nihilist, absurdist memes, comedy sketch shows, and Vines. The memes are usually meant to be relatable, a piece of the human experience distilled into a gif or image and short context statement, and the comedy sketches often have some sort of underlying message, but Vines and other videos in particular quite often mean nothing at all. Such existentialist “art” is perhaps the descendant of the dadaist and surrealist art movements following the World Wars, but it is also likely a reaction to a political climate in which many people feel powerless. More than half the country voted for one candidate, and the other became the President; several times in recent years have people been filmed causing harm to another person and then never punished in any meaningful way; politicians and reporters have been caught lying in the news, attempting to gaslight an entire country. It is a political climate that breeds uncertainty and discomfort, one that feels entirely devoid of compassion.
Butoh, according to dance historian Juliette Crump, is inspired by “the basic Buddhist value of compassion” (although Buddhism is not directly related to Butoh). Vangeline’s work in New York conducting Butoh workshops and staging performances “offers participants another way to experience the need for compassion in a suffering world” (Goldberg). It is this compassion that makes Butoh a powerful tool for socio-political commentary in America, a country divided by political party and along religious, racial, and sexual lines. The politics of our country are heavily confrontational and every issue has become a struggle of “us vs them” rather than a step toward a shared goal. More and more we vilify those who do not share our beliefs or our backgrounds, increasing the animosity on both sides. Compassion, a reminder that we are all human and everyone has their own private pain, prevents us from blindly reviling those who seem “other” by reminding us that we are in fact not much different. Vangeline uses this platform to “deal with subjects as varied as feminism, climate change, war, and perceptions of gender” (Vangeline).
Vangeline also includes Freudian themes of the subconscious and repressed emotions in her work, referring to Butoh as “the dance of the unconscious, an expression of what we have not been able to express, of thoughts and feelings that are buried deep inside, beneath our conscious awareness. In Butoh, we try to bring those thoughts and feelings to the surface, to confront and transform them.” It is the rawness of the emotions portrayed in a Butoh performance that give it an intense, visceral impact on the audience. The performers express unadulterated, tender emotions; through their slow, disjointed movements and twisted, unexpected facial expressions they become a wretched thing that each member of the audience can identify with in some way, and thus cannot help but feel compassion for. Set adrift by Butoh’s lack of explanation or plot structure, we can only project our own selves onto the performer, creating a kinship between performer and onlooker.
Vangeline is herself heavily involved in exploring this healing nature of Butoh. She believes that “Butoh dancers enter an altered state of consciousness, somewhat like meditation” (Vangeline), and that this meditative state can promote healing through the confrontation of difficult emotions. This is the core idea behind the Dream a Dream project, Vangeline’s effort to teach Butoh to incarcerated men and women as a way to work through distressing emotions. The New York Butoh Institute, housed by the Vangeline Theater, is also engaged in research concerning the connection between Butoh and neuroscience. The Japan Dance Therapy Association reported preliminary findings that Butoh “promote[s] general well being in individuals and in the community” (Nancy). Mirror neurons, neurons in the brain that are activated both when we ourselves perform an action and when we watch others perform that action, account for the human experience of feeling the emotions or pain of someone else “as if you were in their shoes” (Marsh). Prominent neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran explains, “If I really and truly empathize with your pain, I need to experience it myself. That’s what the mirror neurons are doing, allowing me to empathize with your pain.” These neurons are activated when we spectate, such as when we watch a Butoh performance, and create feelings of empathy and compassion in response to the raw anger, sadness, or joy portrayed by the dancers.
In twenty-first century America, Butoh retains its role as a social and political commentary by reducing the human subject to a primal form in order to inspire compassion. Because we feel compassion — empathy and concern — rather than pity or contempt, we are drawn together by a shared experience. Vangeline’s mission to “engage, educate, [and] empower through Butoh” is not dissimilar from the core tenets of Butoh when it was first born. Today, Butoh continues to be a theatre of protest in a world — and a country — that too often pits people against one another and is all too familiar with suffering.
Works Cited
Andrews, William. “‘Butoh’: the Dance of Death and Disease.” The Japan Times, 28 May 2016, www.japantimes.co.jp/culture/2016/05/28/books/book-reviews/butoh-dance-death-disease/#.Wi9Y8UqnFPb.
Cardone, Alissa. “Butoh: The Good of Going Out of Style.” The Brooklyn Rail, brooklynrail.org/2004/02/dance/butoh-the-good-of-going-out-of-style.
The Editors of Encyclopædia Britannica. “Surrealism.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 1 Dec. 2016, www.britannica.com/art/Surrealism.
France, Vangeline. “‘Flower — Secret with Butoh Master Tetsuro Fukuhara and Vangeline Theater.” Vangeline.com, www.vangeline.com/calendar-of-upcoming-events/2017/11/17/solo-butoh-performance-by-tetsuro-fukuhara.
France, Vangeline. “New York Butoh Institute.” Vangeline.com, www.vangeline.com/new-york-butoh-institute/.
France, Vangeline. “Vangeline.” Vangeline.com, www.vangeline.com/vangeline/.
France, Vangeline. “‘What We Do.’” Vangeline, www.vangeline.com/what-we-do.
Goldberg, Jeff. “How Butoh, the Japanese Dance of Darkness, Helps Us Experience Compassion in a Suffering World.” Tricycle: The Buddhist Review, 14 Nov. 2017, tricycle.org/trikedaily/butoh-japanese-dance-darkness/.
Loke, Margarett. “BUTOH: DANCE OF DARKNESS.” The New York Times, The New York Times, 31 Oct. 1987, www.nytimes.com/1987/11/01/magazine/butoh-dance-of-darkness.html?pagewanted=all.
Marsh, Jason. “Do Mirror Neurons Give Us Empathy?” Greater Good Magazine, 29 Mar. 2012, greatergood.berkeley.edu/article/item/do_mirror_neurons_give_empathy.
“Texts From Your Existentialist (@Textsfromyourexistentialist) • Instagram Photos and Videos.” Texts From Your Existentialist, Instagram, 4 Nov. 2017, www.instagram.com/textsfromyourexistentialist/?hl=en.
