| | Posted by David
Sankai Juku anyone? No I didn’t sneeze…

I have put this Paris-based Japanese butoh group on one of the top five performances I have seen… ever..

Now, that is quite a bold statement I agree, but I wish you all could have seen this performance of “Kagemi, beyond the metaphors of mirrors”.

Butoh I believe is best described as momentary meditative movement, therefore the artist is completely in the moment of the performace and looks as though they are in a trance, which then brings the audience in with them. These aritists all have their heads shaved and paint their whole body in white chalk, which comes off in a powder as they move.

What made the performance so compelling for me was not only the visual aspect (as you can see in these pictures) but the complete dedication of the aritsts to what they believed. The director of Sankai Juku, Ushio Amagatsu, had clearly spent his lifes work evolving this form of butoh. And the result of it, as an audience member, was almost a voyeuristic approach to seeing him in their habitat.

The piece opened with dozens of Lotus flowers hanging on the floor of the stage, only to rise to the ceiling once the performance started. Seeing these flowers gradually rise, made me feel as though the whole show was underwater.

It is art like this that motivates me to be an artist. Performers like these inspire not only fellow dancers and artists but the general public as well. The whole audience around me was captivated and entranced… Entranced with this movement that seems so hard to put into words.

Photo Credit: Jacques Denarnaud