Butoh Dance: Basic Principles and Their Reflection in the Contemporary Belarusian Physical Theatre
Butoh is an avant-garde dance style that originated in Japan in the early 1960 s in the performances by Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. Butoh offered radically new principles of choreography and relationship between the dancer and his own body, and innovative techniques of working with image and stage space. Among the main principles of Butoh, the following can be distinguished: the accentuation on the movement of the body, not on accurate choreography, the principles of “Empty Body” and body archeology, a borderline physical and mental condition of the actor and his body, the performer’s radical subjectivity, an appeal to the creative powers of the subconscious, and the rejection of traditional concepts of harmony and beauty. Butoh started to be performed in Belarus in the early 2000s and now is a natural part of the stage practice of Belarusian dance groups and physical theatres, e.g.: Vyacheslav Inozemtsev’s InZhest, a physical theatre, and independent choreographer Irina Anufrieva. The main aspects of Butoh that are focused by Belarusian theater directors and dancers are: meaningfulness, spontaneity and improvisation of movement, understanding movement as a means of revealing subconscious impulses, close interaction between bodily movements and images, revelation of bodily memory in choreography, the principle of spatial drama, overcoming the understanding of dance as an illustration of music, emotion, and image. Butoh breaks canons and traditions of dramatic art and reveals a huge potential for the development of new theatrical and choreographic forms.