Online Timeline: Butoh Incidents

Illustrations: Yo Ishihara

Live talks from our “BUTOH Sunakku” in Ueno/Ikenohata.

A Butoh dancer from Japan is invited to perform a “Butoh Exhibition Dance”

The Online Timeline: Butoh Incidents exhibition that is currently running as part of our “TRU Exhibition” program presents a line of events running from the birth of Butoh to the present day. Highlighting the relationship between Butoh and popular culture, this is a new way of looking at Butoh’s history in terms of its impact on society through a variety of incidents. This first “BUTOH Sunakku—TRU Exhibition” talk, will feature some of the team who put the Butoh Incidents exhibition together. Takao Norikoshi, who was consulted on the content of this timeline, the illustrator Yo Ishihara, the director Naoto Iina, and Toshio Mizohata, who drafted the timeline, will be getting together to discuss this timeline from their various perspectives.

At the same time, a “Butoh Exhibition Dance” will be running in the background of the talk. In this talk, Tenko Ima will be appearing to perform a slow, sculpture-like performance. She was awarded a cultural commendation award for the year 2020 from the Agency for Cultural Affairs—a new event that could be added to the list of Butoh Incidents.

Guest speakers

Takao Norikoshi

Writer, dance critic. Director of Japan Dance Plug, Ltd. Studied in the United States at the invitation of the NY Japan Society in 2006. Japanese Director of the Giappone Dance festival in Genoa, Italy in 2007. Recently he has worked as adviser or judge on a wide range of projects for theatres, foundations and festivals in both Japan and abroad. He has also written a number of books including Kontenporari dansu tettei gaido HYPER [PERFECT GUIDE BOOK of Contemporary Dance] (Sakuhinsha), Douse dansu nanka minaindaro [ESSAY] (NTT Publishing), and Dansu Baiburu [Dance Bible] (Kawade Shobo Shinsha). He currently has columns in the monthly magazines Bravo, Act Guide and Ballet Web.

Yo Ishihara

Artist. Born in 1988. Completed a PhD in Art and Design from the Tohoku University of Art and Design in 2020. Her paintings explore the invisible boundaries and unconscious filters between “them” and “us”, and “you” and “me”. Among numerous exhibitions, her recent activities include a solo exhibition Who, which was held online in May and in real life in August 2020 at the Seizan Gallery. She also creates works as part of a collective.

Photo by Zheng Yuanbo

Toshio Mizohata

Joined the Kazuo Ohno Dance Studio in 1983, and became involved as a lighting technician for Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno’s performances both in Japan and abroad. He has produced events organised by the Kazuo Ohno Dance Studio, including Hyakkaryouran (2007) and Antony and the Ohnos (2010). Since 1990, he has been maintaining the Kazuo Ohno archives, and published many books, videos etc. including Kazuo Ohno’s Workshop Words. In 2004 he joined BankART 1929, and organised the Kazuo Ohno Festival. He established the non-profit organisation Dance Archive Network in 2016, which organises “Dance Archive Project” events, of performances inspired by archive materials.

naoto iina

Videographer, director, dramaturg, visual scenographer and producer. Iina is the founder of Dance and Media Japan and International Dance Film Festival. He is also an Associate professor at Tokyo Zokei University and lecturer at Za Koenji Theatre Academy. Recently he has been working on cross-genre works with video, dance and text. He is in charge of direction, composition, filming and editing of the online Butoh program "Re-Butoooh" (NPO Dance Archive Network).

Photo by naoto iina

Tenko Ima

Butoh dancer. Director of the Butoh Company Kiraza and the Ima Tenko Butoh Studio. She was involved in the founding of Byakkosha in Kyoto in 1980, and went independent after it disbanded in 1994. Began holding Butoh workshops at the former Byakkosha studio in 1999, and formed the Butoh Company Kiraza in 2000. Toured Europe in 2005. Performed at the Gojo Kaikan Theatre in Kyoto 2007-2016, and has been holding long running performances at KYOTO Butoh-Kan since it opened in 2016. She was awarded a cultural commendation award from the Agency for Cultural Affairs in 2021. Her work cultivates unique states of mind through the search for an avant-garde Butoh based on "tamafuri", an old term meaning the "reinvigoration of life", which is found in the origins of Japanese performing arts.