HOLD THE DATE:
photo: Lukasz Bielawski
The Butoh Book
For many dancers Butoh is more than just a dance form. It is sometimes a concept, a wider form of art or a certain way of thinking about life, death and the world. There is no one way of understanding Butoh. The Butoh Book is a scrapbook which “translates” the body movement into a physical object. Many of the most prominent Japanese Butoh dancers and Butoh institutions have been invited to contribute to the project. They are given the space of an A3 size paper to create something that is Butoh for them. It may be a collage of costume pieces, dance notations, drawings, found objects... All A3 papers have been collected and bound, with a help of a shoemaker, into The Butoh Book. It is a trans-disciplinary project with the aim to explore origins of Butoh in a new way.
Concept & design: Karolina Bieszczad-Stie
Design: Anna Roza Gurowska
Year of production: 2019
Invited artists/institutions: Atsushi Takenouchi, Azumaru, Dai Matsuoka (Sankai Juku), Daisuke Yoshimoto, Ima Tenko, Ken Mai, Mushimaru Fujieda, Saga Kobayashi, Tatsumi Hijikata Archives, Yumiko Yoshioka.
Butoh Book can be viewed here:
photo: Damien Serban
Thinking practice // Conference
21-24 November 2019
Oslo, Norway
The year 2019 marks the 60th anniversary of the first Butoh performance “Kinjiki”. Since its beginnings, Butoh has resisted fixity, encompassing and now generating influences ranging from music, theatre, visual arts, politics, technology and more. Butoh has been extensively researched across disciplines, both in theory and practice, with a tight dialogue between these two approaches. As a result, new knowledge about Butoh dance appeared in a form of artefacts such as images, music, designs, models, digital media or other outcomes such as performances and exhibitions.
With this in mind, we organise an international Butoh conference. It will focus on interlinks between the nature of Butoh practice in an interdisciplinary context and the theoretical knowledge that is significant for and within its practice. The conference will feature scholarly and artistic presentations, workshop, performances and film screening.
The aim of the conference is to contribute to an overview of the current evolution of Butoh as well as to present early Butoh work in a new context. Further goal is to provide an opportunity for networking and exchange of new ideas, and inspirations. Given the inter- and trans-disciplinary nature of its theme, the conference is intended to be of interest to researchers and practitioners from a diverse variety of backgrounds and disciplinary orientations within the Arts and Social Sciences.
Funded by: FFUK, Kulturrådet, Sasakawa Foundation, Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Kunsthøgskole I Oslo, Republikken Polens Ambassade i Oslo, Spill the Tea, Kulturhuset
Conference schedule can be downloaded here: