Project Rebirth booklets up for grabs

[Rosemary]

Dear ones,

I'm just wrapping up 2 weeks in Japan - Osaka for the IFTR conference and Tokyo for networking, performances, and general sweating.

While in Osaka I went to a mini-symposium by the Hijikata Archives on their recently completed project to research and locate the film made of Hijikata for Expo 70 that was projected in the Astrorama. The Archives folks are positing the footage as a sort of bridge between Nikutai no Hanran in 68 and Hosotan in 72. I'm not fully convinced of their argument - I thought much of the (short) footage was reminiscent of the spirit of Kamaitachi.

Anyway, it's pretty cool to have this new footage. They produced a booklet, Project Rebirth: Looking for Hijikata Tatsumi Dancing in Astrorama. I grabbed some extras, so let me know if you'd like me to mail you one. First come, first served.

Also, I'm wondering if we have any thoughts to if/how this group might continue to function, and if we might want to invite new folks in. There are some that I met at IFTR that might be good colleagues.

Hope your summers are lovely!

-R.

--

www.evesapple.blogspot.com

[Tanya Calamoneri]

Hey! Out in the woods but just a quick email to say yes please a book! My address is 325 e 16th St bklyn NY 11226. I will reimburse you mailing. More soon!! Curiousyo hear about the conference! And thank you!!!!!!

X Tanya 

Tanya Calamoneri

PhD Candidate,Temple University Dance Department

Artistic Director, Company SoGoNo

www.sogono.org

718.207.3307

[William Marotti]

I'd love a copy, if you'd be so kind! And we should try to have a big skype chat in September to think about the group--I'll know more about the Center's plans by then, which may be a help.

Bill

Sent from my cellphone--kindly excuse terseness and typos!

[William Marotti]

Address is 4271 elenda st culver city 90230.... I'll pay you back for the postage.

Sent from my cellphone--kindly excuse terseness and typos!

On Aug 13, 2011, at 7:28 AM, Rosemary <eves....@gmail.com> wrote:

[Megan V Nicely]

Rosemary and everyone,

I too would like to reconvene the group, and find a format for new people. What might work? I like the idea of dialogue around topics, and also reading each other's writing, and of course seeing each other if there is a conference or such......

And thank you so much for the book offer, I would love one and also ditto on the postage.

Megan Nicely

5845 Chabot Court Unit B

Oakland, CA 94618

Cheers to all,

Megan

-- 

Megan Nicely
mnd...@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~mndance/

[Katherine Mezur]

hi, unfortunately I broke my arm the day before leaving for Japan and never made it there. Save a REBIRTH for me? But Hayato Kosuge and Morishita and I were going to meet up in tokyo before the IFTR conference at the archives. I was there last year too, you too Rosemary? Bruce must know all about the politics there. Anyway Kosuge really wants to do more with the butoh archive and I will be going in Sept. instead for a meeting. He will be putting together a butoh conference or some format in the next two years. I have been urging him to expand the technology aspect beyond "preservation and hijikata's buto-fu" and he is really up for it. He and I made a panel for PSi that was based on ideas of memory and technology in J-performance. He is very inspired by performance studies broader/deeper questions. Have you all already talked about the butoh conference at UCLA? If any of you have written about it or would not mind sharing information with me, I would love to how it went, what worked, what's next, etc. thanks k

on butoh books:

 Have you all read the Stephen Barber book, Hijikata: Revolt of the Body? I am curious because I have gotten to know him, and I am just not sure of that book, any opinions out there? with my broken paw, I also made myself read the Fraleigh butoh book, and am also wondering what others think of these current publications. 

danke

k

 
 

Prof. Dr. Katherine Mezur
Research Fellow
International Research Center
"Interweaving Performance Cultures"
Freie University Berlin
Grunewaldstr. 34
12165 Berlin(-Steglitz), Germany
Tel.: +49 30 838 50448
Fax: +49 30 838 50449
kme...@sbcglobal.net

Home:
1100 Miller Ave.
Berkeley, CA 94708
Tel. and Fax: 510-845-0554

---

From: Megan V Nicely <mnd...@earthlink.net>
To: butos-corp...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Sat, August 13, 2011 9:17:26 PM
Subject: Re: Project Rebirth booklets up for grabs

[Rosemary]

Hi all,

Clearly I should have picked up more booklets! They're all claimed at this point.

Katherine, since you'll be meeting with Kosuge next month, could you get a copy from him then?

As for the group, I like Bill's idea of a skype chat in the fall. And we can continue to generate questions/ideas here in the meantime.

-R.

On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 12:17 PM, Megan V Nicely <mnd...@earthlink.net> wrote:

Rosemary and everyone,

I too would like to reconvene the group, and find a format for new people. What might work? I like the idea of dialogue around topics, and also reading each other's writing, and of course seeing each other if there is a conference or such......

And thank you so much for the book offer, I would love one and also ditto on the postage.

Megan Nicely

5845 Chabot Court Unit B

Oakland, CA 94618

Cheers to all,

Megan

-- 

Megan Nicely
mnd...@earthlink.net
http://home.earthlink.net/~mndance/

--

www.evesapple.blogspot.com

[Bruce Baird]

Rosemary, et al.  

I haven't seen the Astrorama footage yet so I can't say anything specific, but there are a few general things to say about this.  One is that it is pretty clear that Hijikata recycled ideas across performance genres and that this recycling could stretch over fairly large points in time.  If you had time to look at all 10 thousand photos in the arts center, one interesting thing is to linger over the photos of Space Capsule, or Art Village (which are the shows that are closer to the burlesque side of HIjikata's output) and see poses, and movements that were also used in the more "high art" avant-garde performances.  So the burlesque shows could serve as idea labs for something that will make it into a dance later, or vice versa.  And you are all probably aware of the footage from the various Ishii Teruo movies that Hijikata appeared in that matches up with what was going on in the dances as well.  So HIjikata was clearly using in one place stuff he had already choreographed for another purpose.   In that sense, each of these records can open up understanding of a different dance.

Obviously, with the appearances in cinema, a director is asking Hijikata for something that fits within a larger project, so its not clear the extent to which we can see clips from a movie as directly related to what Hijikata staged when he was the one with the directorial control.

In the usual histories of Hijikata, (echoed by me even at UCLA), you have the early crazy stuff and then the later Hijikata method/butofu stuff and one question is where to draw the line between the two.  But Schwellinger notes that even in Nikutai no hanran in 68, Hijikata is doing something himself that looks like what he is teaching Tamano later in rehearsal in 1972.  We have no way of knowing from the outside whether Hijikata was already applying mental adjustments to his own movements in 1968, but Ashikawa had already been at Asbestos Hall for over a year by then and the other standard line in Hijikata histories is that Ashikawa was particularly receptive and thus good at taking instructions from Hijikata and that the two spent a lot of time together developing new methods.  Until, someone can find a way to get an interview of Ashikawa, its going to be hard to pin down the question of when we should date the shift, but my hunch (and at the moment it is no more than a hunch) is that Schwellinger's observation coupled with Ashikawa's entrance to Asbestos-kan makes it so we can push the date of the shift earlier rather than later.  The art center archive is sitting on footage of Gibasa from sometime Oct.-Dec 1970 that is the precoursor to Gibasan in 1972 (on the same 27 Nights program as Hosotan), but has chosen not to focus on that footage, so we have to ask, what sort of story does the archive want to tell about Hijikata that makes Astrorama something you focus on, while you don't focus on Gibasa.  (Incidentally, the archive also has Aug 28-Sept. 1, 1970 footage of Fountain Hall which clearly looks a lot like Rose-colored Dance, so I don't want to make it seem like there is a big break here.  But Fountain Hall is clearly men and Gibasa is clearly the women, so even if 1970 is indeed a transition period, its a gendered transition.  And clearly, the fact that its Hijikata himself dancing in Astrorama makes that attractive footage if the through narrative you want to tell has to do with Hijikata's internal state of mind.

 

Bruce Baird
Assistant Professor
Asian Languages and Literatures
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Butô, Japanese Theater, Intellectual History

717 Herter Hall
161 Presidents Drive
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003-9312
Phone: 413-577-4992
Fax: 413-545-4975
ba...@asianlan.umass.edu

[Bruce Baird]

Rosemary, et al, (again)

It might be a good idea to make this more of a standard listserv for discussion and questions about butoh.  I don't know how hard it is to manage such a thing.  We could ask Reiko Tomii from ponja genkon, or Aaron Gerow from KineJapan for advice.  There used to be a website that hosted a discussion about butoh, but it was often just people proclaiming over and over that butoh was an ineffable art form, which is not that useful for us.  

Bruce 

On Aug 13, 2011, at 10:28 AM, Rosemary wrote:

[Tanya Calamoneri]

what about butoh nexus, through cave?  it's not a listserv but I think you can post to all or something like that...or maybe we could get a listserv off of it.  want me to ask ximena?

tanya

--
PhD Candidate, Presidential Fellow
Temple University Department of Dance

Artistic Director, Company SoGoNo
www.sogono.org

718-207-3307

[Krebs_Virginia]

Hello! Nice to hear from everyone. I'm interested in a booklet if
more should become available - thanks. I'd also like to keep the
discussions going. Maybe we could consider focusing them around key
questions (regardless of the Skype/email format). This was so helpful
last year in making our exchanges productive and specific.

Best to everyone,
Ginger

Rosemary wrote:

>Hi all,
>
>Clearly I should have picked up more booklets! They're all claimed at
this
>point.
>
>Katherine, since you'll be meeting with Kosuge next month, could you
get a
>copy from him then?
>
>As for the group, I like Bill's idea of a skype chat in the fall. And
we can
>continue to generate questions/ideas here in the meantime.
>
>-R.
>
>
>On Sat, Aug 13, 2011 at 12:17 PM, Megan V Nicely
<mnd...@earthlink.net>wrote:
>

>> **

>> Rosemary and everyone,
>>
>> I too would like to reconvene the group, and find a format for new
people.
>> What might work? I like the idea of dialogue around topics, and also
reading
>> each other's writing, and of course seeing each other if there is a
>> conference or such......
>>
>> And thank you so much for the book offer, I would love one and also
ditto
>> on the postage.
>> Megan Nicely
>> 5845 Chabot Court Unit B
>> Oakland, CA 94618
>>
>> Cheers to all,
>> Megan
>>

>> **
>>
>> --
>>
>> **

[Rosemary]

We could always just start a new google group, one that is open to new people joining (perhaps with moderator permission). That's probably easiest.

-R.

--

www.evesapple.blogspot.com