Scrap – yard Art Performance by Eva Bjorkman Brojkman
In order to describe the outstanding contemporary dance with the roots in a tradition and folklore, in a theatre, as a theatre critic and writer to a wider audience I would mention the untraditional concept of Japanese traditional Butoh dance. I am talking about brutal, raw and sublime!
The first dance in Japan may as well have been a mythological strip tease. Because Butoh was a high class striptease in Japan. This striptease does not include taking off the clothes in the Western sense. We are talking about the Japanese folklore now, the goddess Ame-no-Uzume-no-Mikoto entices Amaterasu Omikami, the sun deity, to come out of hiding by ripping off her clothes and dancing. The elemental irreverence is in a style of dance also known as Ankoku Butoh or “the dance of utter darkness.”
The modern and contemporary dance today includes Butoh dance, which is a traditional Japanese striptease-utter-darkness dance. Co-founded by Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, the-naked men in white makeup on their faces performing slow, intensely controlled micro-movements in nowadays version was formed in the 70s. But, Butoh recognizes a range of styles, from the grotesque to the austere, and from a Western point, it may not be that erotic, but maybe for some more comic. It is frequently regarded as surreal and androgynous. It basically includes primal expressions when physical beauty is not important, but rather human condition.
My favorite would be Swedish SU-EN Butoh Company www.suenbutohcompany.net
A first time real life visit to a Butoh dance school would be a dance school that students take in 4 years in Uppsala, Sweden at Haglund Skola run by SU-EN Butoh Company. A Swedish choreographer and Butoh artist SU-EN is pursuing the issues of the body in full condition/unconditional body art activities. Her Butoh company is called SU-EN Butoh Company takes roots in the Japanese Butoh and influence from conceptual and performance art the work is directed towards exploring the extreme situation of the contemporary body. Her work is based on perception and reality research and all the work is done in the surrounding landscape, woods nearby Stockholm, where the school is located, in the seasons (all 4) or any kind of weather. Because of the very difficult physical performance needed and demanding physical abilities, due to a very tiny and very slow body move, students of this school are to have stage experience and beside actual Butoh practice the students are asked to take part in work around the garden, grounds, cut the wood etc…
The stage in the actual school is not only inside, but outside, because almost all the performances are done outside. In the nature. This artistic kind of research of Butoh is the research of reality and perception. And perception here is a dominant and very important aspect.
SU-EN was for 5 years a disciple of Tomoe Shizune, artistic director of the Tomoe Shizune & Hakutobo Butoh group, originally formed by the late Tatsumi Hijikata. SU-EN was also a member of the sister group of Tomoe Shizune & Hakutobo, Gnome where Yoko Ashikawa where she was teaching and choreographing. She mastered martial arts and Butoh with Japanese teachers in Japan, and holds a license in the Izumo school of Jiuta-mai (traditional Japanese dance) as well as a wide experience in various Japanese body methods and martial arts. “SU-EN also SU-EN’s work might be described as a body where the human shapes have been erased. The body is urged to confront other living matters as well as the social, cultural and political situation around. A power in the body beyond the individual human power is aimed for. Images and fragments from nature, its shapes and conditions of living are present and presented. Simple and visual as the dance may appear, it initiates a strong concentration and presence of the viewer.”
A Scrapyard Love
How to perform and to be seen in a scrap-yard? SU-EN is still active in a wide area of performing; touring to festivals with choreographed pieces. The pieces may be a site-specific happenings/art interventions, entire plays or collaborations with different artists and musicians. Since 1994 performances have been created for all site specifics, nature art festivals, rock festivals, scrap-yards, castles, boats, beside a theatre hall. And for now, when theatre halls are out, due to a coronavirus, the last outside performance happened a month ago in Uppsala, Sweden, on a scrap-yard. To see just a bit of that and to try to imagine, what is really that I am talking about, please check SU-EN Butoh Company at Uppsala performance Scrap Love 2020:
Scrap Love 2020 edit 21 min from VORACIOUS on Vimeo.