Online Timeline: Butoh Incidents

1 April–15 August 2021

Online

Butoh Incidents

Butoh was not just at the forefront of the avant-garde art movement, it has also had a number of connections with the entertainment and commercial worlds. Butoh dancers have historically appeared in a variety of fields, as performers in cabarets, commercials, a film for the 1970 Osaka World Expo, as backing dancers in music videos and, more recently, on popular TV dramas. This illustrated timeline looks at the various connections with media and other art styles that Butoh has had, even as it continued to inspire society.

Illustrations: Yo Ishihara

Content consultation & contribution

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.

Illustrations

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.

Director

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).

BUTOH Sunakku—TRU Exhibition
(Talk & Butoh Exhibition Dance)

A series of talks inviting experts and artists to hold in-depth discussions in Japanese about the TRU Exhibition works. Tune in to find out how these exhibitions came about, what the highlights are, and get some extra pointers on how to get the most out of these pieces. During these talks, a Butoh dancer from Japan will be invited to perform a “Butoh Exhibition Dance”, with the aim of creating a new style of event where talks are conducted in a Butoh-inspired atmosphere.