Original subtitles

as an American Artist working in the

form of Bhutto it's always been

important for me to discover the Western

roots of the work that I do

I'm not Japanese and I have no desire to

dance as if I'm Japanese but whether I

call what I do Bhutto or not there is

a western way into this work and what

follows is just a few thoughts I have on

that subject

there were of course many Western

influences on Tatsumi hishikate and

kazuo Ono the founders of bhuto before

World War II the only authentic Japanese

dancers were traditional dances the very

thought that a dance could embody the

spirit of an individual dancer came to

Japan through the West very important in

this development was the work of Mary

vigmon a German expressionist dancer who

developed this style of dance called new

dance one of cosmono's first

Inspirations to dance was a performance

he saw by Harold kreuzberg in 1934. how

kreuzberg was a German Expressions

dancer and himself a student of Mary

vigmon

first dance teacher Baku Shi who was a

pioneer of a distinctly Japanese style

of modern dance was himself a student in

the Mary big mod new dance tradition

another important teacher of Kazu Ono

was Takaya oguchi who had also studied

dance with Mary vigmon kazuo Ono studied

with the Gucci both before and after

World War II and tatumi huchikata had

studied dance with kasuko matsumura

another student of aguchis and you can

see how this the ideas and influences of

this German new dance kind of

constellated around the early Bhutto

dancers

vigmon's conception of dance was that

Dan should involve a spiritual

transformation of the dancer she

stressed that dance does not represent

it is she often danced in silence or to

simple percussion scores because she

felt that the music should not control

the movements of the dancers but the

movement needs to Spring from the

dancer's inner life

she sought to transcend the personal and

become a vessel for Universal forces all

of these elements are also very

important to puto big man's description

of her own dance as a lustful

destruction of the physical being a

process in which for seconds I almost

felt a Oneness with the cosmos that

could have been written by a buto dancer

the exaggerated wildness of the

movements the psychic intensity the low

down into the Earth position

all this presaged the coming of bhuto in

addition to the influence of the German

new dance hajikata was also very

influenced by certain European writers

like Rambo desad arto Jean Janae in fact

the first Bhutto performance kanjiki

even though it was named after a book by

Yukio Mishima was actually more

influenced by the writings of Jean Janae

the influence of Janae on the

development of Bhutto can be found in

the surrealist absurdity in the

fascination with the grotesque

transforming the ugly into the Beautiful

the rejection of social norms and the

exploration of eroticism Antonin arto's

collection of essays the theater and its

double was first translated into

Japanese in 1965 and it had the same

galvanizing effect on the Japanese

avant-garde as it had on the American

avant-garde when it had been translated

a few years earlier our toes call for

theater to return to its Primal roots in

Shamanism in ritual in mysticism and in

the body deeply resonated with his

Shikata hishikata's 1968 performance

Tatsumi hishikate and the Japanese the

rebellion of the body is often seen as

an attempt to manifest artos ideas about

theater

he danced violently explosively

spastically he flung his body against

metal plates he danced with a golden

phallus it ended with him carried Aloft

by ropes as if they were trying to pull

pull him apart as a thin form of a

crucifixion or Resurrection

but interestingly for hijakata this

piece represented a break from western

dance from then on his dance would more

and more search for the Japanese for his

own body and his memories of childhood

and in the bodies of his dancers

still one of ichikata's most prized

possessions was a recording he had of a

radio program that arto had done shortly

before he died of a piece called to have

done with the Judgment of God

a farm

it is Fast Response got the week

approved something okay

the continuing influence of our toe on

Buto can be seen in bhutto's ritualistic

elements and in its search for Primal

modes of being and perceiving Primal in

the sense of exploring pre-cultural

aspects of human existence the profound

influence of the Spanish dancer Antonio

Mercer on kazumano is also well known

and I've spoken about it before in other

videos I also want to mention that

while the Affinity of

Bhutto to Buddhist philosophy is very

clear Ono himself was a Catholic and

this sensibility forms all of his work

he's often described as the light his

shikata's darkness and optimism that is

entwined with his faith Ono's quoted as

saying Jesus was a Buddha master

Akira Kasai another important Bhutto

Pioneer left Bhutto for 14 years seven

of which he spent in Germany studying

eurythmia a movement form developed by

Rudolf Steiner the spiritualistic

educator the philosopher and even now

that kirkasai is back in Japan and back

doing bhuto you can still see the

influence of Steiner in his work in his

use of sound and words his exploration

of the connection of the sound of words

with emotional states and his

explorations of how the relationships

between body and space is affected by

mental processes

among current Bhutto performers Aiko and

coma

also cite is their mentors and dance not

only kazua Ono but Marita chamel another

disciple Mary vigmon

my point in talking about the Western

influences on bhuto is not to deny what

is specifically Japanese about the work

of the Pluto Pioneers but rather it's to

explore how we in the West can use our

own cultural heritage to continue and

explore this work puto does have

similarities to many forms of Western

performance that we're developing at the

same time that Bhutto was taking shape I

mentioned before that arto's book the

theater and its double was first

translated into into Japanese in 1965 it

was first translated to English in 1958

it had the same galvanizing influence on

Western performers that it had on

Japanese performers trying to revitalize

their art puto is certainly related

aesthetically if not historically to the

works of Jersey grotowski at the same

time that Ono and hichikato were taking

their first steps into Bhutto kratowski

was working with his polish theater

laboratory and doing work that matched

Pluto in in many ways in its insistence

on absolute authenticity of movement in

its spiritual questing that sought to

transcend individual psychology and the

Primacy of inner impulse as a source of

all movement even in the training

exercises and the themes of violence and

violation that they explored in their

Productions and in the astonishing

psychic and physical presence of its

performers

foreign

[Laughter]

abandoned the creation of live

performance for audiences because he

felt for him there was an irresolvable

conflict between art as performance and

art a spiritual practice he did stress

that this was his own solution or his

own attempt to find a solution to that

problem and that other artists other

creators may find different solutions

but for him there was an irresolvable

conflict between

artist performance and artists spiritual

practice for the remainder of his life

almost 30 years gutowski stopped

directing Productions and devoted

himself entirely

to exploring the use of theatrical

techniques movement dialogue chants

singing as a vehicle for the personal

Spiritual Development of the performer

he referred to the stages of his Works

ultimately as parathiatrics theater of

sources objective theater and art is

vehicle

there's a whole genre of performance

especially on the west coast in the US

that explores dance theater and ritual

as a means of spiritual growth and this

is this type of performance has arrived

at many of the same places that Pluto

has practitioners like Anna halbrin in

Marin County Cyrus off the man in San

Francisco and Ontario Ali who calls his

work ritual theater sometimes

paratheatrics psych witowski did they

all have in some way or another touched

upon the same ground as Bhutto for

example in in Ali's ritual theater

participants first create an inner state

of what he calls no form in order to

make space for the energies of the

universe whatever they're exploring at

the moment in order to make space for

those energies to enter the body and to

move them into dance this is perfectly

analogous to the bhuto's empty body

dancing from a place

of

non-intentional Demands work in dance

theater is also deeply rooted in the

idea of performance as a vehicle for

personal transformation for work explore

Shamanism ritual improvisation

meditation Qigong energy states

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and Cyrus Health demand was herself

deeply influenced by her work with

Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen Cohen's Body

Mind centering is very resonant with

Bhutto and it's striving to overcome

ingrained habitual patterns of movement

and also in its attempts to bring a

direct awareness to the experience of

being in a body maybe because of its

root in the chaotic 60s

Pluto also has a lot in common with a

certain strain of Western performance

art especially in his preoccupation with

trying to do something real that rejects

and abandons the artifice of

theatricality the artifice of theater

the idea that Bhutto is a transformative

way of seeing and of being in the world

rather than simply a dance style Finds

Its analog for example in the work of

the living theater though perhaps with

the living theater it didn't have the

same kind of Pluto's rigorous emphasis

on discipline as a way to avoid

self-indulgence and of course bhuto was

never political the way the living

theaters work was political

there's also an idea among Bhutto

artists that by putting your body in a

state of Crisis You Can Shed artifice

and come to a more authentic way of

being you can also see this in certain

Western performance artists like Chris

Burton or Joseph Boyce when Chris burden

had himself shot in the arm or crucified

to a Volkswagen or when he lay covered

in burlap

in the middle of a busy highway he was

risking his safety putting his body in

crisis when Joseph Boyce locked himself

in a cage for a week with a wild coyote

he was seeking an experience that

transcended performance something

shamanic a ritual something real I've

known Pluto artists to perform almost

naked and freezing cold or bury

themselves alive as if in a grave or

have their bodies pierced on stage All

In Search of that authentic experience

that real non-theatical moment

in America of the many styles of bhuto

the one that is most well known is

characteristically thought of as

involving extraordinarily slow movements

this creates for both the audience and

the performer a transformed relationship

with time and it can generate states of

mind that approach those of Trance or

spiritual meditation

[Music]

and this is similar to the experimental

work that Robert Wilson was creating in

the 60s

extended pieces sometimes as long as 12

hours and slow Dreamscapes that invite

audiences and performers to enter a

different way of seeing a different way

of thinking a different way of being

[Music]

foreign

[Music]

when you look deeply into Western

culture you can find many artists and

thinkers whose work lived in the same

realms

as modern Bhutto artists my name Blake

talks a lot about in his works we'll get

a call Young in his writings of alchemy

because Cosmo Ono and Tatsumi gato were

looking for a universal way of moving an

authentic way of moving there is a

western way into this work

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