more on butoh publications

[Rosemary]

Hi all,

I'm expanding my reading list, and am wondering if people would be willing to share their bibliographies on butoh, postwar Japanese performance, and postwar Japanese culture/society/politics. 

And more specifically, who are your go-to authors?

Since we all seem to be coming at butoh from different directions, I'm curious to see what everyone's key texts are.

Many thanks!

-R.

--

www.evesapple.blogspot.com

[Katherine Mezur]

Dear Butoh group: I realize we are in a difficult time of limited finances, myself included, but I wanted to see if anyone out there might be intererested in creating a panel for ATHE and/or SDHS. The panel might be butoh focused or some of you might want to use your butoh research in another context, this might also be interesting. Because these conferences have themes please take a look at their websites. 

ATHE deadline is November 1.

With ATHE we can join with the Assoc. Asian Perf FG and Performance Studies FG or if you have other suggestions? I think it would be very interesting to think about the 1960s and Demonstrations, Rebellion etc. or extend the politics of butoh in other times and places. Let me know your ideas. I just saw a film by Linda Hoagland, "Anpo: ArtXWar" at University of San Francisco (where Megan teaches) in their Asia Pacific Center, that was really amazing in terms of how artists in the early postwar and postoccupation worked against the American use of Japan as a military base. 

SDHS is in Philadelphia but the proposal is not due until Dec. 1 Ithink, and it has a cool theme (june 15-17?).  It would be very cool to link our different butoh strategies to the metropolis and our different cityscapes. 

Conference 2012: Dance and the Social City Let me know what you think and send ideas. We might send a similar prop to both to save time. I may send this out to other listservs so I apologize for multipostings.  Take care in this exploding world, Katherine

 

Prof. Dr. Katherine Mezur
Research Fellow
International Research Center
"Interweaving Performance Cultures"
Freie University Berlin
kme...@sbcglobal.net

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

---

From: Rosemary <eves....@gmail.com>
To: butos-corp...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Thu, October 20, 2011 11:27:13 AM
Subject: more on butoh publications

[Bruce Baird]

Rosemary and all,

These are suggestions that I have shared with different people so some may be repeats for some, but about postwar Jpn culture/society/politics, I would suggest Dower (Embracing Defeat).   There is a nice series of essays edited by Miyoshi and Harootunian: _Postmodernism and Japan_, and _Japan In the World_, and another called _Japan after Japan_ edited by Harootunian and Yoda.  I am suggesting these because they are edited volumes so you get a feel for a wide range of approaches to an era or problem.  Another good  edited volume is _Postwar Japan as History_ (by Andrew Gordon). 

One of the things I tried to do in my ms is connect butoh to a schematic history of the body in postwar Japan.  For that arc, I think that Sakaguchi Ango, and Tamura Taijiro are initially important as authors who advocated for the body/flesh on the assumption that Japanese people had been denying the body for centuries.  Tamura’s novel was called Gate of Flesh.  It has not been translated, but it has been adapted for cinema four times.  Probably the most famous of these (and available from Criterion with subtitles) is Suzuki Seijun’s Gate of Flesh (1964).  For Sakaguchi (in particular his famous 1946 essay “Discourse on Decadence”) see: 

James Dorsey and Doug Slaymaker eds, with translations by James Dorsey.  Literary Mischief: Sakaguchi Ango, Culture, and the War. Lanham, MA: Lexington Books, 2010.  (Dower also has a section about Sakaguchi).  Also, see Slaymaker _The Body in Postwar Japanese Fiction_.

Then for the athleticism that I think is partially reflected in Anma and Rose-colored Dance, watch a few Sun Tribe films (Such as Nakahira's Crazed Fruit), read Mishima's _Sun and Steel_.

For the turn back to ethnically marked Japaneseness, consider Marilyn Ivy Discourses of the Vanishing: Modernity, Phantasm, Japan (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1995). And Jennifer Robertson Native and newcomer: making and remaking a Japanese city University of California Press, 1991.

 

That should be enough to keep you busy for a bit, so I'll stop there.

Bruce

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]

PS. for one other thing that I hope will become an important part of butoh bibliography, check it:

http://us.macmillan.com/hijikatatatsumiandbutoh/BruceBaird

On Oct 20, 2011, at 2:27 PM, Rosemary wrote:

[Michael Sakamoto]

Hi, Katherine. I'd be happy to submit something, especially for SDHS. I'm developing a new piece with Rennie Harris, who's based in Philly, that considers resonances between butoh, hip-hop, and urbanism/urban ecology.

I also was supposed to be on the main panel last year for the AAP/ATHE pre-conference, but I had to cancel because I got a Japan travel grant for that same month, so I'd like to resubmit my Kamaitachi paper if possible.

OK, thanks for nudging us!

Michael

 

Michael Sakamoto
Performance and media artist
Faculty, MFA-Interdisciplinary Arts, Goddard College
email: michael...@yahoo.com
site: www.michaelsakamoto.com
blog: anemptyroom1.blogspot.com

---

From: Katherine Mezur <kme...@sbcglobal.net>
To: butos-corp...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, October 21, 2011 10:06 AM
Subject: ATHE or SDHS proposal?

[Michael Sakamoto]

Wow, $90?! I guess your book is gonna be my Xmas present to myself...:)

Michael

 

Michael Sakamoto
Performance and media artist
Faculty, MFA-Interdisciplinary Arts, Goddard College
email: michael...@yahoo.com
site: www.michaelsakamoto.com
blog: anemptyroom1.blogspot.com

---

From: Bruce Baird <ba...@asianlan.umass.edu>
To: butos-corp...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, October 21, 2011 10:40 AM
Subject: Re: more on butoh publications

[Tanya Calamoneri]

Congrats Bruce!!  I was going to say you were one of my go-to authors :)

Ditto on the Slaymaker and the authors he covers - just found that this past summer and am fascinated with the transition from pre-war kokutai (national body) to post-war nikutai (flesh body).

I'm also fairly interested in Nishida and the "Philosophers of Nothingness" - Japanese phenomenologists. 

I also recommend reading Mikami's dissertation.  I know it's a terribly translation and it's generally a writing mess, but I still think it offers useful information about Hijikata's later work from a dancer's perspective.

Also Nakajima Natsu is an incredible wealth of information on Hijikata's early work, and she is coming to the US for the first time in a very long time in Spring 2012 - organized by Nicole LeGette in Chicago.  If you are interested in bringing her to any of your universities, contact her at "Nicole LeGette" <nlege...@hotmail.com>,

I ran into Zach tonight at a talk Mark Franko was giving, and we were both bemoaning the fact that we wanted to respond more to these emails but we had so much writing to do, and wishing we had another conference to organize around...so thanks for that Katherine, and will respond to that one soon too!

all best,
Tanya

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

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

[Tanya Calamoneri]

I vote for SDHS!  Better topic, more time to get it together, and I love Philly :)

Thanks for getting it started!  Will submit some thoughts soon...

Tanya

[Megan V Nicely]

Yeah Bruce!!! (will there be a paperback?!)

I echo the sentiment that I wish i had more time to read and respond
to these emails, I often would much rather be doing this than some
other things, so i hope another conference will give us the
opportunity to come together. SDHS yes, was already looking into that
so let's take this next month to chat and formulate? As a continuation
of this butoh scholars community perhaps as part of our pitch?
Would also love to hear your reading lists if you are willing to share.
Best to all, Megan

-- 

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

[Katherine Mezur]

both sound good, Michael. Who else for ATHE can you suggest?
 

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: Michael Sakamoto <michael...@yahoo.com>
To: "butos-corp...@googlegroups.com" <butos-corp...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Thu, October 20, 2011 6:50:01 PM
Subject: Re: ATHE or SDHS proposal?

[Michael Sakamoto]

I wonder if Yuki Goto from SAn Francisco State U would be interested in giving the Asian performance angle on things? I bet he could give both past and current contextualization. Or Carol Sorgenfrei to compare with postwar Japanese theater?

[Bruce Baird]

I also second SDHS. 

[Bruce Baird]

PS. for me, the topic of dance and the city lends itself to a lot of interesting topics related to butoh (at least).

For one, you have the relationship between the city and Tohoku, and how Tohoku functions for a dance form that for a long time resolutely occupied the city.  Its clear that Hijikata early on feels a kind of fraught relationship with Tokyo, but its also clear later that his relationship to Tohoku is pretty fraught as well.  (So Michael's comments on Kamaitachi could prove interesting in this light.)

I have argued for a connection between butoh facial expressions and cubism, and its clear to me that cubism is also related to urban spaces, so there are other connections to be explored (beyond just funding streams and sufficiently large audiences to support dancers).

Also, I gave a talk at MIT's Cool Japan Project about butoh and hip hop, so I'd be interested in hearing more about what Michael and Rennie are thinking about that topic.

Zack might have some interesting ideas to add from the perspective of Min, (and the example of Suzuki finding an alternate source of funding in Toga I think would be related to the kinds of perspectives that Zack might bring).   Mikami is out in the boonies now as well.  One thing that I find interesting about Min and Mikami is that there is a certain sense of escaping the city when people make the trip up to Tokason, but at the same time, Min and his dancers often come into Tokyo to present at Plan B as well. 

bruce

On Oct 20, 2011, at 11:13 PM, Tanya Calamoneri wrote:

[Katherine Mezur]

 

yes, Dance and the City is very strong. I also went to a few of the Cool Japan series at MIT and made a course called Cool Asia modeled after it, working across performance and the migration of artists in Hong Kong, Beijing, San Francisco, Tokyo, Taipei...right now, among a whole lot of other stuff, I am working on my Stranger Community and Berliner Butoh, digging into the metropolis of Berlin and its many scars, holes, and joys. 

Maybe we have two panels here...

k 

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

From: Bruce Baird <ba...@asianlan.umass.edu>
To: butos-corp...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Fri, October 21, 2011 8:01:20 AM
Subject: Re: SDHS proposal?

[Tanya Calamoneri]

Maybe we can bring it all together under the "hometown landscape" concept.  Yoshito mentioned that one of Hijikata's friends (I forget who at the moment) told him he shouldn't dress so smartly because he was a buto dancer, and Hijikata defended him, saying "no, he is a city boy, so he is correct."  Could be interesting to talk about Hijikata's complex relationship to city in relationship to his hometown landscape...

My head is truly buried in a pile of books - this is the first time I've heard of MIT's Cool Japan - please post these things if and when you think of it, I would like to attend if possible!

thanks,
Tanya

[Zack Fuller]

Hi Katherine and all,

I would definitely be interested in participating in a group at SDHS. One of the things I am interested in looking at that might fit into the theme is "unlicensed" site specific dance in urban settings (that is dance performances  done without any sort of official permission where audiences include people who had not planned to watch a dance, or might not even know that they are watching a dance). This is something that Min Tanaka used to do a lot of. I'm not sure if anyone else is interested in that but it could fit  somewhere into a broader topic. 

This summer I acquired some extremely interesting videorecordings of Min's work, including a duet with Yoko Ashikawa that Hijikata directed in 1983 (part of the Hook Off series at Plan B) and a film incorporating sections from different performances of the Hyperdance series. Maybe we could view one or two of these at the conference. 

Is there a transcription of the paper that Inata Naomi presented at the Butoh Symposium in L.A.? When I spoke to her at the Symposium she said someone was working on an English version.

I think it would be great to put together a bibliography. I'm not sure what the best way to go about putting one together collectively would be. Does anyone have  a "buto bibliography" that we could each add stuff on to? I'm sure any of us could start one....

As Tanya mentioned I have really been stimulated by some of the e-mails shared by group members, and have not really been able to take the time to respond fully.

As far as new directions for scholarship, I may have said this before but I strongly feel that what the field of dance studies needs regarding so-called buto dance is studies of specific artists, groups, and dances. If we look at what has been written on post-modern dance for example there is quite a bit of that, and not that much about "what is post-modern dance?"  In quite a bit of the writing on buto there is a tendency to theorize without giving much insight into actual practice. 

Regards,

Zack

[Katherine Mezur]

Dear Zack and all, I am collecting all the responses for the SDHS panel(s). Will assemble and send out to group in 2 weeks. But I still have to do something with ATHE because the Asian Performance focus group will be doing a special tribute to David Goodman, who was one of my mentors, so I do want to go. Anyone who is still interested let me know. 

Zack and others: on your DVDs, to say the least I not only want to see them, but I also want to study them for research purposes. This brings up a topic of DVD archives and how we may hold onto our own resources that others could use. I know there are circumstances where you have promised to keep some performance dvd just for you. ok, fine, but I always ask my artist, if possible can I have permission to show or even duplicate this for researchers? Most of the time they will say yes, and I always let them know it is xxx who needs it for a book on xxx. We all really need these resources. Is there any way to create a google site with only member access that has space for uploading DVDs of performances? Any ideas on this would be greatly appreciated. 

How can we open up these resources with respect to the artists?

On the LA Symposium, is there an archive of responses etc. somewhere? I was unable to attend and would love to know what worked, what you might do next time, what was missing, fantastic, etc. Also you all who were physically attending IFRT in Osaka, what did you think of the Japanese presentations on Butoh? What is anyone's sense of what is going on among Japanese scholars....thanks.

On Bibliography, you know a google site would make this all easier. 

best k

 

Prof. Dr. Katherine Mezur
Research Fellow
International Research Center
"Interweaving Performance Cultures"
Freie University Berlin

kme...@sbcglobal.net

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

---

From: Zack Fuller <zful...@verizon.net>
To: butos-corp...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Mon, October 24, 2011 1:40:45 PM

Subject: Re: ATHE or SDHS proposal?

[Alissa Cardone]

I am in the process of uploading video of the UCLA Butoh Symposium to a 

website that will allow everyone access to the talks and panels... stay tuned

for more information.. but all talks, Bruce's, Inata's, Susan Kleins and the 

artist panel were recorded and will be available ASAP... 

- Alissa

[Bruce Baird]

Katherine,

One of the things that was most interesting for me at the UCLA conference was the resistance to any sort of advocacy in butoh.  So I am not sure what to do with that and the theme for ATHE.  There was a strong sense that butoh should not be civic engagement at all (this despite my attempt to demonstrate that there had been a strong strain of civic engagement in early butoh).  Gavin addressed a parallel issue in his critique/appreciation for Fraleigh's new book.  So unless I (or somebody else) spoke directly about that issue and explored why butoh wasn't considered suitable for civic engagement, I am at loss as to how to go approach ATHE.

While I am on the topic though (and in reply to those who have said that they have stuff to say, but haven't found the time to say it), I should take a moment and extend my reply to Gavin (with the caveat that this is more just a set of anecdotes than a reply proper).  Gavin had talked about butoh as addressing social and political problems vs existential and transcendental problems.  Apropos, Gavin's dichotomy, Rosemary and I buttonholed Kan at a bar after the conference and asked him if butoh could address social protest and he firmly maintained that it could not, because those problems were too small and butoh was meant to deal with bigger issues. Not more than an hour later, Bill and I were having a chat with Maro's translator, and he told us that in all his wildest dreams he had never conceived of someone asking about the ethics of butoh (as I did to the performers). Similarly, I think its in the MA thesis of Paul Roquet where he quotes Shinichi Koga telling him that he was at a conference where there was the ferocious fight about whether or not butoh could be used as therapy, with one side adamant that butoh could not be used as therapy, and one side equally forcefully sure that it could be used as therapy.  From my perspective having read the way that Hijikata focuses on pain so much, I find the debate both amusing and bemusing.  Hijikata and Ono were both almost perseverative about pain and examining themselves, so to me the evolution to someone like Nakajima who wants to use butoh for a kind of movement therapy makes perfect sense (a kind of butoh analogy to dance therapy).  (Of course, I am always the person who is arguing for thinking about butoh as capable of addressing a wide range of issues.)  I am not sure I can see my way to such an easy split between Gavin's two poles, because as I read someone like Hijikata or Ono, the gap between the social and political problems and the existential and transcendental problems seems so narrow to be almost non-existent, but I do agree that bringing in various kinds of ethical modalities is important.

Bruce

[Rosemary]

Katherine, Bruce, et al,

I'm interested in ATHE. I've been wanting to write about Corpus Delicti, a LA-based butoh collective founded specifically to do street performances in response to the Iraq War. Bruce, I'm intrigued by the possibility of having you on the panel talking about the issues you outlined in your email alongside me, Katherine, anyone else? (I've lost the thread a bit) talking about butoh being used in precisely the ways others say it cannot be.

I do want to propose something for SDHS, but since the theme is Dance and the Social City I was thinking more along the lines of a panel that looks at the relationships between bodies and cities; I think I'll pursue that outside of this working group.

-R.

[Rosemary]

OK, I'm reading all of these posts in reverse order. So nix what I just said about SDHS, and count me in, though it does seem like it will be necessary to do two panels. (TWO panels on butoh-related topics?! How wonderful!)

I'd want to do a paper on Eiko & Koma’s New York site dances as a way to explore their changing relationship with their adopted city and their attempts to create space for themselves as Japanese immigrants and Asian Americans. How do they initiate and sustain relationships between their two dancing bodies and public places in New York, and to what end? In other words, how do these choreographers conceive of site dance, why do they employ it, and what are the implications on them as artists and on the city with which they dance? 

Maybe we'd have one panel about sites in Japan, and one about diasporic sites?

For me, this is in addition to ATHE/AAP.

-R.

--

www.evesapple.blogspot.com

[Rosemary]

Wooooo hooooo!

I just asked the UCLA dance librarian to order it!

-R.

--

www.evesapple.blogspot.com

[Katherine Mezur]

Hey Rosemary I have to hit my writing right now, but WUNDERBAR on all counts. Will get back weds. on ATHE and later on sdhs (two panels or some other format for more in-sites/out-sites). Yes on civic/social engagement, I started thinking about corporeal citizenship and nationalismz ... back later. 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: Rosemary <eves....@gmail.com>
To: butos-corp...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Mon, October 24, 2011 4:38:33 PM
Subject: Re: ATHE and Civic Engagement and a half a long overdue reply to Gavin

[Rosemary]

Have you all run across Katja Centonze's _Avant-gardes in Japan_? It's basically a collection of papers on butoh given at a symposium in Italy. I have it but haven't read it yet. Looks like an interesting collection of writings by Europeans, and it includes one of Katja's papers on nikutai and shintai, which is her thing. (That may be particularly interesting to you, Tanya, given your mention of kokutai and nikutai.)

-R.

--

www.evesapple.blogspot.com

[Katherine Mezur]

 

Here is the connection for the Katja book with description and chapter titles and authors.

On-line editor:  Janet R. Goodwin <j...@cs.csustan.edu>

                                           H-JAPAN(E/J)
                                           June 20, 2011


Dear List Members,

Dear List Members,

I am pleased to announce the publication of the volume

Avant-gardes in Japan. Anniversary of Futurism and Butoh: Performing Arts
and Cultural Practices between Contemporariness and Tradition

edited by Katja Centonze (Cafoscarina, Venezia, 2010)

ISBN: 978-88-7543-293-5                   Euro 26,-
Pages 278

Please visit the webpage:
http://www.cafoscarina.it/default2.asp?id=417

This collection of essays examines Japanese avant-garde expressions, the
socio-cultural interrelations in the encounter with Europe in the pre- and
post-war twentieth century. The first section focuses on the
introduction of Futurism and Japan's pre-war avant-garde phenomena in
literature, art, cinema and journalism. Part two is centred on several
analyses of butoh, the post-war avant-garde dance. The third section
considers various approaches to Japan's traditional performing arts in
their twentieth and twenty-first century transformations. Issues of
hermeneutics, methodologies, aesthetics, cultural reception and exchange
are individually examined in this volume from a wide range of
perspectives. Furthermore, relations between corporeality and cultural
practice are addressed in the interplay between tradition and
contemporary culture feeding into the radical attitude forged in the 1960s
turmoil which involved Japan's society, politics and
artistic-cultural productions. This book offers a thorough reflection on
avant-garde in general, as exemplified by the Japanese phenomena. Thanks
to the generosity of Hosoe Eikou, his precious photographical contribution
is included.

                      CONTENTS
Kamaitachi: Photos by Hosoe Eikou

Preface

Acknowledgements

Avant-gardes in Japan. Anniversary of Futurism and Butoh: Performing Arts
and Cultural Practices between Contemporariness and Tradition
Katja Centonze


I.  Avant-gardes and Avant-guerre in Japan

Marginal Modernism? The Historical Avant-gardes in Japan
Thomas Hackner

Some Notes on the Reception of Valentine De Saint-Point in Taishou Japan
Pierantonio Zanotti

J-Horror: Mythology, Folklore and Religion
Maria Roberta Novielli


II. Butoh: Past and Onwards-For the Fiftieth Anniversary of Butoh

A Soul that "Wears the Body as a Glove": German Ausdruckstanz and Butoh
Eugenia Casini Ropa

Bodies Shifting from Hijikata's Nikutai to Contemporary Shintai: New
Generation Facing Corporeality
Katja Centonze

Body as Object: How Could Butoh Go Beyond Orientalism?
Ishii Tatsurou

Hijikata Tatsumi's Butoh: from 1960s Avant-garde to the 1970s Butoh
Notation
Morishita Takashi

III. The Japanese Dance and Performance: Tradition versus
Contemporariness

The Void Embodied: An Encounter of Butoh and Noh in Okamoto Akira's Mu
Stanca Scholz-Cionca

舞踊劇としての能―能における舞踊の役割を中心に  (Nō as
a Dance Drama—About the Role of the Dance
in Noh Theatre)
Takemoto Mikio

歌舞伎と舞踊―舞、踊、変化 (Kabuki Theatre and Buyou—Mai, Odori
and Henge)
Bonaventura Ruperti

Illustrations


 IV. Concluding Discussion

Concluding Discussion. The Japanese Dance and Performance: Tradition
versus Contemporariness

Abstracts

Contributors



Many thanks for your kind attention.

Best wishes,
Katja Centonze
(Waseda University, Trier University)
katj...@unive.it

---

From: Rosemary <eves....@gmail.com>
To: butos-corp...@googlegroups.com

Sent: Mon, October 24, 2011 5:26:22 PM

Subject: Re: more on butoh publications

[Tanya Calamoneri]

Thank you Katherine and Rosemary!  I came across her work in the archive before this was published and contacted her, but forgot to recheck that this was coming out. So glad it has! I will try to find it.

That's a really interesting shift from Hijikata's nikutai to contemporary buto's shintai. I think that speaks to your comments Bruce about Natsu's and others' desire to use buto methods in dance therapy. Vangeline's work with incarcerated women comes to mind too. Ian Wen has also been experimenting a bit with buto imagery work and Alzheimer's patients. And I have been trying to get a workshop going with a veteran's organization. Food for thought. 

As for writing about individual artists, I would like to write something about Shinichi and inkBoat at some point. We have been talking about me writing a profile in advance of a new York performance, an I could easily extend this into a paper for a conference. He's an interesting case of city and country with his current inkground project in the wilds of northern ca and marriage to Dana Iova, a former Min student. 

More soon

Tanya 

Sent from my iphone, sorry about typos

Tanya Calamoneri

www.sogono.org

718.207.3307

[Michael Sakamoto]

Hi, Bruce. Just curious about your butoh and hip-hop paper for obvious reasons. Rennie and I have been in conversation for a few years, and we're going into the studio next Spring. Nothing solid yet. I plan on writing a short section of my diss on this, though. Wouldn't mind perusing your paper and maybe quoting from it, unless you're not ready to make it public.

Anyhoo, hope you're well...:)

Michael

 

Michael Sakamoto
Performance and media artist
Faculty, MFA-Interdisciplinary Arts, Goddard College
email: michael...@yahoo.com
site: www.michaelsakamoto.com
blog: anemptyroom1.blogspot.com

---

From: Bruce Baird <ba...@asianlan.umass.edu>
To: butos-corp...@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, October 21, 2011 10:01 PM
Subject: Re: SDHS proposal?

[Michael Sakamoto]

It's clear to me that in reality there's no controversy whatsoever about whether or not butoh (and/or its various idiosyncratic iterations, forms, techniques, whatever) can be used for civic, social, or other forms of engagement. The answer's YES because people are already doing it and in fact have always done so. What I find most useful to ask is simply HOW and not IF, and what's possible as opposed to what has been.

On that note, Tanya, I'd love to find out more about all the people you mention since my dissertation is exactly about the generative potential of butoh practice on all fronts, including and perhaps especially working with a variety of communities, constituencies, etc.

Cheers,

Michael

 

Michael Sakamoto
Performance and media artist
Faculty, MFA-Interdisciplinary Arts, Goddard College
email: michael...@yahoo.com
site: www.michaelsakamoto.com
blog: anemptyroom1.blogspot.com

---

From: Tanya Calamoneri <tcala...@gmail.com>
To: "butos-corp...@googlegroups.com" <butos-corp...@googlegroups.com>
Cc: "butos-corp...@googlegroups.com" <butos-corp...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Tuesday, October 25, 2011 5:07 PM

[Bruce Baird]

Michael,

You'll have to read the book for butoh and hip hop!  

No, seriously, it is in the book in very inchoate form, but I don't mind sharing here.

I have had several interviews with Yoshito and also saw him at the Japan Society's  3 Week Butoh Parade (in which he did Mu, which was a kind of retrospective of all the dances he has ever done), and both in Mu and also he when he talked about the way he was supposed to move in an early dance called Dark Body (Antai), he  always does this jerky disjointed movement of tensing and releasing of muscles that reminds me of popping from West Coast funk dance.  Yoshito claims that the dance was about the complexes that Japanese weight-lifters had about their bodies vis a vis American bodies (presumably the kinds of American bodies that were available for Japanese people to see were either the bodies of soldiers or the bodies that were on TV or in movies as part of pop-culture).  Anyway, it seems pretty clear to me that we can't be talking about any sort of a direct influence in either direction from Yoshito to young black kids in Fresno, or vice verse, so I thought about what it means to have similar movements at a similar time and and tried to think my way through that issue.  It seems clear to me that popping and locking come from trying to make the body approximate what machines (particularly robots) can do (or more accurately what we imagine them to be able to do--of course real robots are mostly boring to watch because they turn out to not move in interesting ways at all).  The young kids in Fresno and Long Beach were watching Robot movies (many of which were from Japan), but there is a debate as to whether such techniques as popping, locking, and ticking came from watching robot movies or came from some sort of voodoo rituals.  I can't comment on that debate in any meaningful way, save for observing that even if popping, locking and ticking did come from Voodoo rituals originally, its highly likely that they were picked back up in a context in which they were thought to relate to machines and conceptions of robotics.  Because in popping you can get this sense from the body being unhinged from its joints or the body being disconnected into disparate pieces that can each move on their own.  So for me, what is at stake in popping is thinking about the relationship between bodies and machines and thinking about how we want our bodies to be able to approximate what we imagine machines can do.  When we get to Deleuze and Guattari, we have the wonderful claim that everything is machines, which we could think about in either a metaphorical way or quite literal way (as a way to dethrone humanity from its perch as something distinctive), or even read in a meta-manner not as a description of the way that the world has always been, but rather as a description of the way the world has become--the way that machines have colonized our bodies.   And taking the ideas about bodies and machines back to early butoh gave me a different angle from which to think about early butoh in terms of thinking about them pushing the boundaries of the body (and thinking about what it means for weight-lifters to push the boundaries of the body and what kind of geo-political overlay there is on the act of Japanese weightlifters pushing the boundaries of the body), and making the body more like a machine.  Often in butoh, there is this notion that butoh provides a privileged access point to a trans-cultural trans-historical reality, but I found it fruitful to think about butoh as within a reality very much mediated by machines. 

Anyway, I'd like to share the paper with you, but I didn't actually write it all down, but just put it together in my head, so I don't know that my scattered notes would mean much.

Cheers,

Bruce,

[Megan V Nicely]

Hello everyone,

Thanks for these rich and informative email conversations, I have finally had a small chance to read them!

Regarding conferences: For me right now, since I am trying to finish my dissertation (and also am responding so late to this), ATHE is out for me, but yes on SDHS as I said. I am going to be working on body mappings and the urban environment this spring (a new class I am teaching) and so would like to write on this and the notion of the body as a social space via the work on Akira Kasai that is in my dissertation.

>>I wonder if we want to propose both a panel of papers and also a roundtable discussion of many of the issues that we have all raised in various ways, but in this thread spoen by Bruce and Zach. We could easily pose a list of controversial perspectives on butoh, and look at how they are perhaps keeping a certain idea of butoh stuck rather than evolving over time. How does it transform to suit the needs of those who use it at different locations and in different bodies? It would be great to talk these  ideas out via concrete observations based on specific practices of different butoh artists, rather than trying to talk about butoh in general. My dissertation also addresses "post-moden" dance, so I could speak to that problem too, and Tanya can also I think ;-)

then, if this ways not way too much, wouldn't it be nice to have a short workshop? But maybe 2 things are enough.

So Katherine, you so kindly will assemble things in a rough sketch?

On a bibliography and video: I guess you know you can post video on Vimeo in a restricted account (I believe) for only certain people to access. Yes on compiling a bibliography, are you looking for books only on butoh or other kinds of related texts as well?

Thanks to all, look forward to pulling this together!

Megan

ïëóxåÄÇ ÇµÇŸÇÃî\Å\î\ÇŠÇ®ÇØÇÈïëóxÇÃñ•äÑÇ•íÜêSÇŠ  (Nÿ as
a Dance Drama-About the Role of the Dance

in Noh Theatre)
Takemoto Mikio

âÃïëäÍÇ ïëóxÅ\ïëÅAóxÅAï¦âª (Kabuki Theatre and Buyou-Mai, Odori

katj...@unive.it

[Katherine Mezur]

cool ideas. Rough sketches for sdhs later this week. x k
 

Dr. Katherine Mezur
Research Fellow
International Research Center
"Interweaving Performance Cultures"
Freie University Berlin

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, October 29, 2011 9:44:44 PM

Subject: Re: more on butoh publications

плуxеДЗђЗµЗџЗГо\Е\о\ЗЉЗ®ЗШЗИплуxЗГс•дСЗ•нЬкSЗЉ  (Nя as

a Dance Drama-About the Role of the Dance
in Noh Theatre)
Takemoto Mikio

вГплдНЗђплуxЕ\плЕAуxЕAп¦вЄ (Kabuki Theatre and Buyou-Mai, Odori

katj...@unive.it

Butф, 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

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

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

--

www.evesapple.blogspot.com

[Tanya Calamoneri]

Hi all,

The ATHE proposal looks great but I don't think I can do the dates. 

For SDHS, I've been thinking a bit about contemporary buto students (and teachers for that matter) as a nomadic community that circulates between several urban hubs, and a few notable nature-based utopian communities (little cities? Schloss Broellin, Min's farm, Su-En's farm, Shinichi and Dana's farm, Rhizome Lee's Katmandhu community, the new one at Lake Titicaca, Diego's place).  It's very much like the contact improv community, and it might be interesting to draw comparisons between the two, but also just to profile the various urban hubs (Tokyo, Kyoto, Berlin, London, SF, LA, NYC, Chicago, many more - I'd be curious to hear what you think are hotspots) and delve into the migration patterns over time.  It's also interesting to me to look at the community as a network of cities - for example I found it very interesting how the network lights up when a visiting master comes to the region, as it's doing with Natsu's spring 2012 trip. The student migrations are what really interest me the most.  Many students travel from very far away to study.  The workshop culture is also very curious, creating temporary communities (who often stay together, and cook or eat together) within urban centers. So something along those lines if that's of interest.

best,
Tanya

[Zack Fuller]

Tanya, I'm curious about where you got the idea that Body Weather Farm is/was a "nature based utopian community."! I've encountered this idea before (usually from people who came to Body Weather Farm and were disappointed that it was not what they had expected) and am wondering where it comes from. Any thoughts? 

-Zack

[Tanya Calamoneri]

Nature-based utopian community not in the touchy feely hippie or charles manson sense, but nature-based utopian in the sense of living off the land and making a sustainable community where you can live off the land or almost, and dance, and basically drop off the grid.  Like Hellerau for Laban.  Well I guess that was a little hippie...

But does that seem like a fair assessment?  I've never been there but my sense of Min is that he's very much off on his own thing, making the world he wants to live in rather than participating in general scene.  Utopian in that sense.

Please correct me if I'm wrong!  You know theory doesn't always jive with practice...

[Zack Fuller]

I guess it depends how you define utopian, but I see what you are saying more clearly now. OK.

[Tanya Calamoneri]

And maybe there's a better word than utopian. I was trying to get at the conscious community, new urbanity or something like that. 

Sent from my iphone, sorry about typos

Tanya Calamoneri

www.sogono.org

718.207.3307

[Megan V Nicely]

In my experience Schloss Broellin had many elements of a dystopia!

ÔÎÛxÂÑá¨áµá¤áÉÓ\Ö\Ó\áºá®áòáàÔÎÛxáÉÒ*”ëá*ÌúÍSẠ (Nþ as

a Dance Drama-About the Role of the Dance
in Noh Theatre)
Takemoto Mikio

’ÉÔΔçá¨ÔÎÛxÖ\ÔÎÖAÛxÖAÔõ’½ (Kabuki Theatre and Buyou-Mai, Odori

ButÙ, Japanese Theater, Intellectual History

--

www.evesapple.blogspot.com

[Tanya Calamoneri]

Hehe, yes that's true. But the self-sustaining nature of the place was what I was after. They don't grow their own food but they have that huge communal kitchen and the little cafe and everybody eats, sleeps, works together. 

Sent from my iphone, sorry about typos

Tanya Calamoneri

www.sogono.org

718.207.3307

[Rosemary]

Just checking in about SDHS. It looks like the deadline is Dec 15. What do we need to do to get our (maybe 2?) panel proposals together?

-R.

bruce

Prof. Dr. Katherine Mezur

Research Fellow
International Research Center
"Interweaving Performance Cultures"
Freie University Berlin

kme...@sbcglobal.net

[William Marotti]

Hey Alissa,

Just checking to see where things are with the video... how goes it? Hope all is well with you guys!

Bill