CONTEMPORARY DANCE and BUTOH

Contemporary Dance and Butoh

A New Perspective on Reality
from a Growing Pandemic-Era Dance Scene
Tsutsumi Hiroshi

The COVID-19 pandemic that began in 2020 continued to rage in 2022, with asixth, seventh, and eighth wave of infections coming during the year. The
Omicron variant of the virus, though less potent, proved highly contagious, andthe performing arts continued to suffer from cancellations and delays. Amid thisturmoil, in February, Russia launched a military invasion of Ukraine. In the
deeply interconnected ballet world, large numbers of Japanese ballet dancers and100

students returned from both countries. Refugees were accepted and charity performances held. In the world of contemporary dance, which has fewer such connections, only Condors responded to the global situation in real time.
In June, Condors premiered Starting Over, a work inspired by the John Lennon
song of the same name. The work begins with troupe leader Kondo Ryohei standing before a crucifix playing peacefully with birds and a dog, but this is followed
by a scene of invading soldiers. The work relativized the situation in the US andJapan to the realities of the Ukraine invasion and awakened its audience anew tothe peace they shared, resonating with many. Having accepted a post as artistic
director of the Saitama Arts Theater, Kondo also brought a breath of fresh air bystaging two of his own productions there, Born on a Planet with Dance 2022
(Dansu no aru hoshi ni umarete 2022) and Genre Cross (Janru kurosu).

Major Works Reexamining Today’s World
Notwithstanding the paucity of works directly depicting the pandemic or war,
there were many major works that sought to reexamine the current situation that

artists face.
It has been around half a century since Kasai Akira opened his dance studio,
Tenshi-kan (“House of Angels”), and the history of Kasai’s company can bedivided into two periods, separated by the time he spent in Germany. This year,
Kasai premiered a joint production featuring both members from the first period(including Yamada Setsuko, Omori Masahide, Yamazaki Kota, and Sugita
Josaku) and the second period (including Kasai Reiji, Kasai Mitsutake, Asami
Yuko, Uemura Naoka, Sakurai Ikuya, Noguchi Izumi, Kujirai Kentaro, andSadakata Makoto), titled What Cagliostro Dreamed in the Castel Sant’Angelo(Rogoku Tenshi-jo de Kariosutoro ga mita yume). The work is built around theidea that eighteenth-century swindler Cagliostro, when imprisoned on suspicionof political crimes, dreamed not of social or political revolution but rather a revolution to create a new relationship between humanity and the natural world—
dance. The work also references Peter Weiss’s play Marat/Sade, and no doubt
Kasai also saw an overlap between Weiss’s work and his own struggle for “the101ideals of human rights.” Kasai poured his heart and soul into the performance,
dancing like a man possessed and astonishing audiences.
Dairakudakan, led by Maro Akaji, also celebrated fifty years since its founding in
1972 with two new works presented in rapid succession: End (Owari) and
Beginning (Hajimari). These connected works portray the universe as a place
where destruction and birth repeat in cycles, and Butoh performers appeared in
the guise of such cosmic mysteries as dark matter, phantom energy, and whiteand black holes. End depicted a contracting universe being drawn into a blackhole, while Beginning reversed this story, showing matter being ejected from awhite hole and expanding to create new galaxies. The sheer audacity of anthropomorphizing the hidden mysteries of the universe and seeking to express suchvast motifs with the body richly stimulated the audience’s imagination, creatinga spectacle that gave full expression to the magnetism and humor of Butoh.
However, Maro’s imagination had more to offer. At the end of both productions, the entire cast donned light blue suits and performed a dance routine while
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singing La la la Sapiens (Ra ra ra sapiensu), an original pop song in the style of
Imawano Kiyoshiro. Against a repeated refrain of “La, la la, la la, Sapiens,” performers interjected lines like “Where are you going?” “What are you doing?”“Dancing,” and “Until the end of time.” The lyrics were by Maro himself andclosed the work with the intimation that humanity would not last until the universe’s end.
Teshigawara Saburo saw his rare genius recognized anew by the world. He wasselected to direct the New National Theatre’s new production of Gluck’s baroqueopera Orpheus and Eurydice (Orfeo ed Euridice), and his limpid, profound aesthetic was visible in everything from choreography and sets to costumes andlighting, drawing rapturous applause. The production wove together Suzuki
Masato’s conducting: the casting of Laurence Zazzo as Orfeo, Valda Wilson as
Euridice, and Miyake Rie as Amore, goddess of love; and an ensemble of dancers(Sato Rihoko, Alexandre Riabko, Takahashi Joe, Sato Shizuka) symbolically102

expressing the characters’ inner worlds. Sato’s dance, which toyed with space andlight like the very spirit of Euridice, intertwined organically with the orchestration and singing, sometimes leading the on-stage action as if to amplify themusic.
The round stage, which floated in darkness like a great white dish, and thewhite lily set design made a strong impression. The lighting changed as the story
progressed, differentiating between overworld and underworld, and the tale oflove transcending even death was depicted simply, with smooth abstraction.
Also this year, Teshigawara began his new “Drawing/Dance” series, in which
he dances with projections of his own drawings, with the premiere of In Search of
Lost Lines (Ushinawareta sen o motomete). The “Update Dance” series featured
Sato’s premiere of her new solo dance Forest of Confession (Kokuhaku no mori),
in which she used a kind of poetry of the body to evoke a phantasmagoricalworld accompanied by a text she wrote herself.
Teshigawara also received the Golden Lion for Dance at this year’s Biennale
di Venezia, becoming the first Japanese artist to win this honor. He was also recognized by the Japanese government as a Person of Cultural Merit.

Kanamori Jo’s Noism (“Noism Company Niigata,” the Niigata City Performing
Arts Center Ryutopia in-house dance company) delved into the history andculture of Niigata, premiering a double feature themed around oni (a kind ofJapanese ogre or demon) in their first full collaboration with Kodo, the taiko performing arts ensemble based on Sado Island.
The first of the two works, Les Noces de Madame Chrysanthème (Okiku no
kekkon), combined Stravinsky’s ballet piece Les Noces with Kanamori’s uniqueinterpretation and direction. Based on Pierre Loti’s novel Madame Chrysanthème,also an influence on Puccini’s opera Madame Butterfly, the work depicted the“local marriage” of Pierre (Geoffroy Poplawski), a French naval officer visiting
Japan in the early Meiji period, and Okiku or “Madame Chrysanthème” (Iseki
Sawako), a prostitute from Nagasaki’s licensed quarters. Okiku and the otherJapanese characters dance like dolls, critically addressing Western orientalism.
At the same time, the work also portrayed the inner oni nature driving the Japanese to banish and kill foreigners, and the pigtailed Iseki transfixed with a performance that concealed a steel core within apparent sweetness.

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The second work, Oni, was a new piece commissioned from contemporarycomposer Harada Keiko on the theme of Niigata and performed with Kodo. The
story follows a group of three mountain ascetics led by En no Gyoja (Yamada
Yuki) who cross to Sado Island and encounter the prostitutes that live there. It
transpires that a nun named Seion has opened a licensed quarter on the island.
Harada’s music was reserved but exquisite. It experimented with organic reverberations, putting various aural sensations to use with instrumentation that
included not just large and small taiko drums but also also a hanging gong, achanchiki handgong, and even the breathing of the performers. This was new
territory for the members of Kodo, who rose to the challenge as performers. For
Noism, too, these were works that took the culture and history of Niigata as their
theme as they explored and embodied the oni that lurk within us all.
Hirahara Shintaro unveiled a new production of Philip Glass’s opera Einstein on
the Beach for the 50th anniversary of Kanagawa Kenmin Hall. This work, which
premiered with the 1976 production directed by Robert Wilson, has been called
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the world’s first example of a “theatre of images,” being made up of multiple fragmentary motifs relating to the life of gifted astrophysicist Albert Einstein. Fear of
nuclear war was high at the time of its composition, and the title was inspired by
Nevil Shute’s science fiction novel On the Beach, which depicted the aftermath of
a nuclear war. Hirahara reflexively illuminates these historical circumstancesfrom a contemporary perspective, establishing as characters historical figures
who lived life in their own way, such as Michel Foucault and Frieda Kahlo, andshackling the Statue of Liberty’s ankles. A giant vinyl sheet is used to evoke the
3/11 tsunami, the Fukushima nuclear accident, and pollution of the ocean byradioactive materials. The result was a powerful piece of theatre that hinted,
nearly half a century after the work’s debut, that the world is once again in a
nuclear and human rights crisis.

Doubting Dance and Viewing Reality with Critical Eyes
Work by female artists from the relatively young Millennial generation also
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attracted attention this year. What these artists have in common is doubts about
dance as it currently exists and the determination to achieve a new understanding of reality on their own terms.
Kedagoro, led by Shimojima Reisa, premiered the new work 세월 (“Sewol” inHangul). The choice not to include a Japanese pronunciation or translation of thetitle suggests intent to problematize. This ambitious work deals directly with thecapsizing and sinking of the eponymous passenger ferry off Korea in 2014,
depicting the extreme circumstances of the passengers caught up in the disaster.
However, it does not recreate the incident itself in detail. Orange platforms are
piled on the stage; when the dancers descend from them, the set collapses, while
the order “가만히 있어” (Gamanhi iss-eo, “Don’t move”) issues intermittently fromloudspeakers overhead. Then a bizarre dance in unison takes place as the song 짜라빠빠 (Jja-ra-bba-bba), famous in Korea, is repeatedly played. The song “Dokdo

Is Our Territory,” known from territorial disputes with Japan, is also used. Some
scenes include movements like fitness drills, including push-ups, pair handstands, and breath-holding.

Shimojima has employed a creative method that places near-cruel burdens
on the bodies of performers to release a series of works. Based on the idea that“‘dance’ is one method of interpreting the world,” she runs repeated experimentswith the human body as apparatus, blithely uninfluenced by existing dance aesthetics. Instead of providing dances for audiences to watch, she uses dance as atool to draw audiences in and think about society together. By critically addressing social incidents that she could not have known directly and ensuring thatthose audiences bear witness to the circumstances as well, she creates opportunities to recognize and consider truth.
Shimojima’s past work includes Monkey in a Diaper (Omutsu o haita saru,2017), about Asahara Shoko of the Aum Shinrikyo cult, and Sky (2018), about theviolent purge within the United Red Army. This year also saw a new tour of her
work Because Kazcause (Bikozu Kazukozu, 2021), a work about Fukuda Kazuko,
who murdered a hostess in Matsuyama and then underwent plastic surgery toevade detection.
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Nakagawa Ayane’s troupe Suichu-megane∞ premiered Good Cow-ken. Rightfrom the beginning, all seventeen members use the full theatre space as a venue
for fierce behavior set to punkish, frenzied rock music. Eventually performers
begin to leap from the mezzanine or threateningly grip kitchen knives in concert
as the work transitions to a performance that evokes ideas of harming oneself
and others, suicide by jumping, and suffocation. The motifs are simple movements, but the sense of irritation and frustration comes through painfully clearly.
With a focus on “the physicality of humans moved to suicide,” the work depicts
humans imprisoned by death.
Nakagawa began learning ballet and classical Japanese dance in early childhood and strives to fuse the two styles into a hybrid creation amid the dilemmaof being torn between them. At the same time, Nakagawa also turns a critical eye
toward contemporary society. At least 20,000 people kill themselves each year inJapan, and recent years have seen an increase in murder-suicides and incidents ofindiscriminate murder. Life is hard, filled with irritations and frustrations; how
do we tame our unstable selves, which threaten to explode at any time? A
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contemporary critical awareness and sensibility made a forthright appearance inthis performance.
Kurata Midori premiered a new work titled I Can/Can’t See You From Here Now(Ima koko kara, anata no koto ga mieru/mienai) (organized by Daimaruyu SDGs
ACT5 Executive Committee and bench Co.). For this initiative, she sought participants from among those working in Otemachi, Marunouchi, and Yurakuchoin the heart of Tokyo, and turned an entire floor of an office building in Yurakucho into a venue for performance. At first glance, the composition may resemble
a docudrama, but it is in fact more like post-drama theatre. One by one, the participants speak, as if introducing themselves. All kinds of people are present, andthe social realities arising from diversity manifest themselves. Individual standpoints thought to be non-individual are presented in close-up. Why do people
live? Why do they work? This work increased the resolution with which we
cognize the world.
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Kurata has a history of creating works based on coming face-to-face withpeople as they really are, including patients at drug addiction rehabilitation
clinics and aging residents in regional areas. She has successfully completedmany projects by pursuing the possibilities of dance expressing the matters thatarise in such encounters as fiction.

Dance Ecosystems Gradually Expanding Amid the Pandemic
Even as the pandemic wreaked havoc on live theatrical performances, more residencies to support artists and opportunities to restage pieces were seen.
At the Toyohashi Arts Theatre PLAT (Toyohashi, Aichi Prefecture), a dance
residency program open to applications from the public has run continuously since2017, and has become a space for many artists to create and present their work.
After its opening was postponed due to the pandemic, Dance Base
Yokohama (DaBY), changed its initial plans to offer expanded support for artists,
including a residency program. In 2022, the resulting repertoire was repackaged
as a “performing arts selection” for a seven-city national tour.
The Yokohama Dance Collection’s competition established two new prizes

after the pandemic to support artists with residency programs at the Kinosaki
International Arts Center (KIAC) and Architanz.
Yokohama Red Brick Warehouse No. 1 started its new choreographer system
in 2022, with Umeda Hiroaki appointed for a two-year term.
Competitions and festivals in various locations remained valuable opportunities for young artists in particular to receive evaluations and achievements
and to have their works restaged. Each restaging is an opportunity to polish thework further.
In this context, the activities of actor and dancer Moriyama Mirai attracted
particular attention. Moriyama, a native of Kobe, was invited to the creative
program at the Kiito Design and Creative Center Kobe, where he collaborated
with neuroscientist and cognitive scientist Nakano Nobuko on the experimental
work Formula. Probing into the topic more deeply, they brought in choreographer Ella Rothschild and embarked on a national tour. Moriyama expanded the
project further and devised ways to share the work more deeply, such as by curating works from top creators in multiple fields to turn the entire venue, including107

the lobby, into a kind of exhibition space.
A suggestion from Moriyama also resulted in the establishment of the Artist
in Residence Kobe (AiRK) program. Because there were no accommodation
facilities at Kiito, the program sourced operational funds through crowdfunding
in order to provide free accommodation so that its artists could concentrate on
creative activities. In the future, the goal is to use AiRK as a starting point forcollaborations with the city’s art and culture institutions that will enrich thesystem and further facilitate creativity. The City of Kobe has appointed Moriyama main curator of the Kobe Re:Public Art Project, which aims to attract tourists to the city using public art.
One final headline from this year: Ito Kaori was selected as director of TJP,
the National Dramatic Center of Strasbourg-Grand-Est. For a Japanese artist
to become director of a public theatre in France is an outstanding achievement.
One can only wait eagerly to see what kinds of collaborations with Japan will
be possible.

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Tsutsumi, Hiroshi
Born in 1966 in Kawasaki. Graduated in theatre studies at the Department of Literature at
Bunka Gakuin. Worked as an editor for art, entertainment, theatre, and dance magazines
before going freelance. Has covered a wide range of performing art genres, including small
theatre, shingeki-style (modern realism) theatre, underground (Angura) theatre, commercial
theatre, traditional theatre, and dance scenes. Has served as a selection committee member
for the Toyota Choreography Award and on the juries of the Guardian Garden Theatre
Festival and the SAI International Dance Festival. Edited The Flying Dangoro Party in the Sky:
“Rebirth of Acharaka” (Sora tobu kumo no ue Dangoro ichiza: “Acharaka saitanjo”), Performing
Arts in Germany Today, and Peter Brook’s The Road to “Battlefield,” among other works.
（Translation: Matt Treyvaud）

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