Re: rebirth, and other questions

[zful...@verizon.net]

Hi katherine and everone else,

I had the dubius honor of reviewing Fraleigh’s book for ATJ, the review should b in the next issue. if you are interested i can send you what iwrote in a few days (im hunting and pecking on a borrowed laptop the changes the text to japanese every time i hit where the space bar is on my laptop, please excuse typos). I was not so direct in the review but i have to say that it is (no doubt unconsciously)  racist. The section on squatting is particularly offensive.What I did not say in the review is that  I believe the real danger of her book is that young impressionable people might read it and actually believe that what she writes is anything other than her own highly subjective view (and obviously a view that I reject completely). At the same time, I suspect that her view of butoh as a global healing dance form is one that is held by quite a few American and European folks smitten with a butoh that is a projection of their orientalist fantasy.

I'd like to ask and comment  more about th archive and the other things folks are discussing as well, will respond after getting home. I just finished an amazing few days of farming, video viewing and interviews with Min. we talked a lot about Hijikata. So more later.

Best to all,

Zack

 

 

On 08/14/11, Katherine Mezur<kme...@sbcglobal.net> wrote:

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 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

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

-- 

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

[Tanya Calamoneri]

Hi Katherine, Zach, and all,

Sorry you broke your arm Katherine!  Hope it gets better soon!

I just reviewed Barber's book for Dance Chronicle, and I think it will be in the next issue.  Basically, I appreciate his zeal but there are very few citations in the text so it's not that helpful for scholarly research.  There are several places where the narrative he presents has been refuted by other scholars' research (namely Bruce's but also Mikami's and others).  Probably the biggest issue I had with it is that he doesn't seem to recognize Hijikata's later work as buto, so the whole later part of his career gets ignored.  He gets points for colorfull stories for sure!  (Hijikata stomping on a sushi banquet in honor of the publishing of Yameru mai hime, among others.)  Maybe a good starting point to get students interested but needs to be followed up by more thorough research in my opinion.

I wonder if there could ever be a definitive book published about buto history though...such a tangled mess.  But I agree with Zach that we need to dispel the orientalist myths as much as possible.

Are you all going to CORD in November?  Maybe we could have a little side meeting then and brainstorm a new working group.

warm wishes to all,
tanya

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

Artistic Director, Company SoGoNo
www.sogono.org
718-207-3307

[Katherine Mezur]

 

you know we have an amazing discussion going here on what is published on butoh and the politics and problems with the history of what has been written (in Japanese and English, but what is in English, before Bruce's book is the most problematic). The power that these publications have over the field (practitioners, critics, and other dance scholars) is astonishing. For a long time I did not want to touch writing on Butoh because it was so airyfairy in English and for many  Japanese butoh scholars, butoh equals Hijikata and there is this kind of sacred fandom going on there. Maybe we need to consider how we might have an online "forum" that everyone can add to. It would be helpful to be positively critical, suggesting things like (my own problem sometimes) "essentialism" or neo-orientalist but then add what might be helpful for further research or critical/philosophical approaches.  What have we found in this review or article or book that seemed to push butoh scholarship into a new arena? Or is there another dance/performance article that has an approach that would be interesting to apply to a contemporary butoh work.... best k

---

From: Tanya Calamoneri <tcala...@gmail.com>
To: butos-corp...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Wed, August 17, 2011 6:45:24 AM
Subject: Re: rebirth, and other questions

[Megan V Nicely]

 

Greetings all,

I am enlivened by this discussion and so agree, the way buto is written about in English is sooo problematic, and often reinstates many of the things that are the problem, either through mythologies of Hijikata or in the very definition of buto (same issues are in modern dance too until recently, essentializing, thinking there is something "authentic" or that all humans share unconditionally, etc). But I feel we have a very informed group working on specific problems and continue to wonder about some sort of publishing option to voice some of these perspectives to a wider audience. Maybe a blog is the way. Miryam Sas has what I think is a generous but also critical article in her new book on Hijikata and homecoming that I recommend.

More soon! Back to school is dawning...

Megan

[gavin wittje]

Dear all:

Honestly, I think Fraleigh’s work is crap. Oddly enough, however, I find myself inclined to defend her, at least to a certain extent. Let me preface this statement with some comments about a divide I couldn’t help but notice recently at the wonderful butoh conference UCLA hosted. This was a divide between scholars and practitioners in terms of the sort of problems that each side tended to focus on and talk about. Naomi Inata talked about Hijikata’s reaction against the notion of the unified, disciplined, whole body that influenced Japan through the distribution of Leni Riefenstahl’s Olympia and the tour of the Hitler Jugend. Bruce talked mainly about the way notions about butoh in Japanese and Western cultures resulted from the amount of touring of specific butoh groups. Susan B. Klein talked about problems of the interpretation of Hijikata’s work and the problems regarding the sexual politics of his groups. And William Marotti talked about the problem of essentialism in butoh scholarship. On the practitioner side of the divide, Suzanne Laage talked about the commonality of the fetal body across cultures and the desire for identification in a non-national way that is implicit within butoh’s emphasis upon the fetal body. And Akaji Maro, Shiniichi Iova-Koga, and Katsura Kan basically talked about problems of expression: catching something alive inside and stealing from outside (Maro), sensing with one’s body something beyond mental understanding and conveying something one cannot identify (Kan), creating one’s own form of dance that does not necessarily have to be called butoh (Shiniichi).

In short, it seemed to me that whereas academics were talking about social and political problems (problems which could conceivably be resolved someday), practitioners were talking about existential and transcendental problems (problems which could not ever be conceivably resolved, and thus, extremely compelling problems, the sort of problems that a life is shaped around). And while we could just say that this is a product of difference of aims and difference in ways of knowing, as academics, we seem to be in danger of overlooking what appears to be an extremely fundamental aspect of what is going on in butoh: artists are undergoing intensive processes of individuation resulting from their engagement with a field of transcendental problems (in other words, problems that extend beyond the contingent and accidental in human experience, but which are not beyond reach of all human knowing).

Having said this, I’ll finally return to Fraleigh’s notion of shamanism. Admittedly it is not the most helpful term, due to its incredible lack of specificity (Bruce, for instance, has mentioned to me how butoh doesn’t really fit with any of the basic types of Japanese shamanism). However what I’d like to say is that there seems to be something at least somewhat positive in what Fraleigh is trying to do. In my view, Fraleigh is someone who feels she has gained a lot of benefit both from watching lots of butoh and doing lots of butoh. To interpret her most generously, then, I would say that she is a person who is trying to respond to a powerful artistic movement by standing close to it and being attentive to what she feels must be the fundamental problems that its greatest practitioners are trying to wrestle with. This is, we must admit, a laudable intention, and I would be eager to hear from some more of the many practitioner/ academics here in regards to Fraleigh’s attempt.

If Fraleigh nonetheless fails miserably, I think it is simply because she is not adequately equipped to deal with the transcendental problems she tries to engage with. It is not until we get to Deleuze that we find a philosopher who is able to fully furnish a transcendental plane (Kant clearly fails). Deleuze also has the benefit of having a lot of sympathies with Hijikata’s project (influence by Artaud, etc.) and having had a PhD student, Uno Kuniichi, who went on to work closely with Hijikata and who translated Deleuze’s chapter on “The Body Without Organs” for Hijikata. So I think it useful to begin with Deleuze and replace this problematic term of shamanism with Deleuze’s more precise term, sorcery. From there, we can even start to note that for both Deleuze and Artaud, the idea of the body without organs has clear mystical overtones to it (Christian Kerslake’s book, Deleuze and the Unconscious, argues this point very fully and persuasively)…

All this is to say that what seems needed to fill the gap between practitioners and academics is a modality of ethical analysis, and here, Deleuze’s philosophy of ethics seems key.

-Gavin 

[Miss Natalie Lazaroo]

Hi everyone

It's been great having more discussions fired up again, and to read everyone's comments. Once again, I've been thankful to have been part of this group, exchanging ideas, and meeting most of you in Seattle!

I'm just wondering how much more I'd be able to contribute to this group - I've finished my research on Zen Zen Zo (submitted my thesis - yay!), and am now in limbo (do I further my studies? do I seek full-time work? do I return home to Singapore? do I try to live in Australia? The list goes on). My investigation into the work of Zen Zen Zo introduced me to butoh (albeit a very very small glimpse of it), and being part of this group widened my understanding further. As much as I would love to continue my exploration of butoh (practice-wise especially), I don't think I have the means to at this point in time. Any input would be primarily from personal interest, reading stuff (thanks Tanya for pointing me onto CAVE) etc.

I'd  be happy if you guys don't mind including me in the group's email, so that I can still keep up with what's going on in the discussions, but if not, then I understand completely.

Thanks everyone and all the best! Hopefully, we'll meet again soon at some other conference!

Cheers
Natalie

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From: butos-corp...@googlegroups.com [butos-corp...@googlegroups.com] on behalf of gavin wittje [gavi...@gmail.com]
Sent: Saturday, 20 August 2011 4:52 AM
To: butos-corp...@googlegroups.com

Subject: Re: rebirth, and other questions

[Alissa Cardone]

Hi Everyone: 

Just wanted to pick up on this thread to say that I really like Megan's idea of a blog.. I'd

be happy to assist in that, perhaps we can form a sub-committee to sort that out, if indeed

people like that idea.

I wanted to also say that there is an area of discussion that I would love to see 

opened up --- how are we teaching  Butoh?  What are the pedagogical strategies

and approaches people are using?  What is essential to lay out for new students who

know nothing about the form? In Butoh there are so many perspectives and methods for training 

that it may seem daunting to try to have a discussion about this - but whenever I am

asked to teach a workshop or to lead some Butoh exercises I always have a moment

of pause...  what are the fundamental teachings that every young Butoh student must learn? Is

it even possible to come to some consensus about this?  With more and more universities

wanting to offer Butoh as an option for their World Dance elective and/or to add to their 

course offerings (especially in the US) what are our obligations as teachers and do we

need to answer to some guideline or not??? I would really love to talk about this with ya'll.

After reading the roster of workshops going on at CAVE (in NYC)for the Fall Butoh training

I frankly had no idea what half of the descriptions where talking about.... it feels very

ambiguous to me what people are actually teaching.  And yet, I'm super curious about 

how unique and individual these descriptions try to be.  So is the objective to be as unique

and individual as possible and teach from your own personal body-story/experience based

on your own teachers and lineage?  

Anyways -- just swimming in my head about this. 

Hope everyone is settling in to Fall. 

Best, Alissa

[Tanya Calamoneri]

Alissa and all,

This is my main area of research!  I'm very interested to talk more about this.

I'm mostly working off of Natsu's structure for buto training methodology - becoming nothing, becoming something.  I'm sure you have her essay, yes?  If not I'm attaching it.  Through my research I found that these can be interchangeable in order, so I've reshaped this a bit into the following three categories of buto training methods: those that cultivate the disorientated bodymind, the subsumed bodymind, and reconstructed bodymind respectively.  More on all of that as soon as I finish chapter 4!

This is based on the ten interviews I did with buto masters (Murobushi, Kasai, Yoshito, Nakajima, Tamano, Waguri, Mikami, Temko, Koga, Muramatsu) and studying with them plus Seki, Su-En, Kaseki, Iwana, Kan, and a whole host of other people - MOSTLY Hijikata people, though Yoshito figures pretty strongly in my study.

I'm curious to hear your (and others') approach to teaching.  I also wonder how these idea mesh with Tanaka, Eiko and Koma, and actually Kasai too as I didn't explore his method much yet...taking his workshop this fall in NY.

My opinion on buto marketing is that it plays into the mystique factor - it's not so much about presenting a clear pedagogy but about securing one's corner of the market...and because it's such a small market, I think buto people aren't interested in any sort of standards that might just give them more competition or lose them students.  Not to be a cynic! Just what I observe...

hope everyone is well! 
Tanya

[Alissa Cardone]

Tanya!!! Sorry for late response --- thank you for sending this --- I can't believe I 

didn't remember this was your area of research.... I'm going to spend some

time with the article (havent' read it).... and will type up some notes re:

teaching... hope others are willing to share as well. 

Good spirits, Alissa

<Natsu Nakajima paper.pdf>

[gavin wittje]

Dear all:

I'd really like to pose a question to the group and see what thoughts people have about this. Hijikata's concerns with fasting and food seemed to be quite a preoccupation with him. In his pseudo memoir, Ailing Terpsichore, there is a line that goes, "if you stroke a sleepy feeling, you'll slim up". In Kaze Daruma, a year before his death, he mentions something about food getting lost inside him. In his other work he criticizes the "lethargic fat" of Tokyo society and talks about the penis needing to become a radiant dagger. In another piece he mentions that "you have to pull your stomach up high in order to turn your solar plexus into a terrorist", and in a famous photo of Hij in Revolt of the Body, we see him with a golden phallus, sucked in abdomen, and bony ribcage. We know that he fasted and tanned for this performance. We also hear that he fasted for "Corpse Vine on Ossa Famine Ridge" two years later. 

What's up with Hiji and food? 

In Sas's recent book, she notes that ""artists such as Hijikata are continuously thematizing the very issues of consumption or even of eating, so that the fleshly consumption and darkness frame the very issue of experimental arts' need for 'light,' visibility, recognizability", and she further claims that for artists like Hijikata, delving into the flesh is related to a search for home and origin as well as an imagined return (177). 

Anyone else have any thoughts on this?

Thanks,

Gavin

[Zack Fuller]

Gavin,

I don't have an answer to the intriguing question "what's up with Hij and food" but a couple of anecdotes spring to mind. One is totally unsubstantiated hearsay but around 1989 when I saw Sankai Juku for the first time (a rather underwhelming experience) someone at La Mama told me that before a tour they all go on a "whiskey fast" (not eating, just drinking whiskey).  Later when I learned about Hijikata's habits I realized they must have gotten this idea from him. MIn Tanaka, who I'm writing on and have worked with extensively as a dancer and reluctant farmer, goes through periods of fasting or eating very little. At one point he was eating nothing all day and for dinner eating seven or eight beans (but all different types), or just eating fruit. And always coffee and cigarettes of course. I can't say for sure that he got this idea from Hijikata but I suspect he did. I asked him why once and he said he wanted to empty out his body. It's interesting to note that Hijikata's self-starvation is a part of his legacy, a part of training for some. Another thing I've seen Min and also Teru Goi do before a performance is jog around in rubber rain gear in august emptying the body of all sweat. There is also the idea that the best condition for dance is for the body to be in a state of exhaustion. My guess is that Hijikata's fasting was part of a process of emptying out the body so that it fully respond to images and impulses. 

Cheers,

Zack

[Bruce Baird]

Zack thanks for making this connection.  You also remind me that Motofuji also has a passage in her memoirs that whenever Hij would get sick, he would cover himself with piles of futons and sweat out whatever was in him.  I am not enough of a biologist to know whether you can really sweat out bacteria or viruses, and I can't help but find it ironic that art of cleansing oneself included tea, coffee and tobacco, but hey....

I am also reminded of long hours spent as a wrestler in high school and college jogging or riding an exercycle dressed in loads of clothes or rubber gear sweating off the pounds (while of course fasting!).  I once came back  from Thanksgiving break 30 pounds over weight and had to cut them all within 3 days.

BB

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