Original subtitles

in this video i want to take a step back

and instead of talking about the history

of bhuto or specific bhuto artists i

want to talk about the aesthetics of

bhuto

in some ways bhuto is such a personal

art form that there are as many

different types of bhuto as there are

artists who do it

but still there's some ideas that

constellate around bhuto and this is

this will very much be my own personal

take on bhuto and there is

no

ones

bhuto

there is no one's bhuto that will

include all of these elements

but most bhutan will include some

or more of these elements the first one

and one which i think might be most

important is the idea of the empty

body i've talked a lot about how bhuto

is about moving from a place of

non-intention

a place that kind of escapes from

personal psychology while still trying

to find something which is true to

yourself trying to find your authentic

self that doesn't mean escaping yourself

it means recognizing

that yourself is bigger than you think

it is

and one of the ways to do this is the

empty body

and the idea is you want to create space

in your body in order to be moved it

means having a relaxed body

a clear mind a sensitive body a

receptive body

an empty body which doesn't mean that it

stays empty of energy empty of images

it's a starting place it's a place from

which you can find your dance it isn't

your dance but it's a place from which

you can find your dance

and that can lead into the second

idea which

is very important to bhuto which i've

talked a lot about is the idea that all

of the movement that you do whether it's

choreographed or improvised needs to

come from an internal impulse

the most authentic the truest pluto is

never about being told okay now move

your hand here and now move your hand

there it's finding

an impulse inside you to move one of my

buttock teachers said you don't want to

move from the idea of the image you want

to let the energy of the image move your

body

so there isn't really a right or a wrong

it's about being authentic

pluto is all about presence it's all

about a revealing of the inner self

through your dance i know that might

sound contradictory the idea of

revealing your inner self and freeing

from your inner self but that's what

art's about

contradictions

dichotomy and

paradoxes

another thing to mention about the

aesthetics of bhuto is the idea of the

white makeup from head to toe which a

lot of bhuto performers adopt and that

is basically about erasing yourself

another way of creating an empty body

creating a way of moving that

that is paradoxically erasing yourself

in an attempt to find the more authentic

you the more deep you the more core you

and that leads to another core concept

of bhuto which is that it's more about

being than about expression

i think i've used this example before

unless i edited it out of a previous

video but

if for example a modern dancer might

want to dance water he or she might

think about how water moves and how you

can move your body in a way

that

ex that conveys water

that expresses water but a butter dancer

would be more likely to create this

empty body

create the strong internal image of

being water

and then just let your body move

spontaneously to the energy of the image

the impulses of the image so you're not

preconceiving the pluto you're not

preconceiving the motion

you're being spontaneous and authentic

it's that presence on stage which is so

powerful that presence on stage

which is everything

another idea which is important to bhuto

which i've talked a lot about is the

idea of moving from a place of

non-intention

casualno talks about that a lot about

not preconceiving your emotions not

preconceiving your choreography but

being authentic and spontaneous to the

moment one of my favorite quotes from

grotowski

the avant-garde experimental polish

theater director he said

that if you have a desire to express

something you are divided part of you

commands part of you obeys true

expression he said is that of a tree it

just

is so this idea of moving from

non-intention is again i think

fundamental to

to butoh

but different artists will take this in

different directions for some it creates

a very deep what i might call a

depersonalized form of dancing mintanaka

said i don't dance in the space i dance

the space which implies that in his mind

he is becoming part of the space and

just letting the dance

come from the energy

from the objects from the

from the structure from the space itself

rather than from his intention some

people

will reject that like akira kasai would

reject that as kind of an

objectification of the body and tries to

move from

sometimes internal spirit

kazumono especially had a

depth of emotion when he danced that was

pretty rare for bhutto artists

another idea which is important to bhuto

i've talked a lot about how the internal

imagery that the dancer moves from is so

important but the audience

often will not know what that internal

imagery is so bhuta becomes like a

rorschach test where the audience will

read their own meanings

into the image

the dancer can be holding very surreal

image in their head which is another

idea which is important to bhuto this

love of surrealism

for example one of my butoh teachers

used to teach us his choreography where

you're walking

on water

you are taking you lift one leg swing

from the hip you take a step lift the

other leg swing from the hip you take a

step

on your hands in your arms you're

holding a tray of water

and on that tray of water is a little

you walking on water holding a tray of

water with a little are you with the

little are you with a little you

and behind you

is someone carrying the tray of water

that you're walking on

who is walking on a tray of water a

carrot by carried by bigger you by

bigger you buy a bigger use you're

carrying this intense image of this long

surreal image of

you just extending smaller in front of

you and larger back of you to infinity

and there might be three or four dancers

moving in almost unison with that motion

it's an intense image

but the audience doesn't know what your

what image you're holding but if the

presence of the dancers are strong and

the focus of the dancers and strong will

be such a compelling

it will be such a compelling moment that

the audience will read their own meaning

into what's happening and that to me is

one of the really magical things about

bhutan

once i directed this

piece

there were i think five of dancers

and for us it was about exploring greek

myths

and afterwards one of the people in the

audience came up to me and said you know

i personally identified with absolutely

every single thing that you guys did on

stage but when i asked him what it meant

to him

it had nothing to do with what it meant

to us and it was such a magical moment

exactly the sort of thing which makes

bhutto such a powerful and magical

performance because it involves the

audience it's a give and take it's not

just sitting there and watching

someone else do something meaningful

it's you

finding

meaning and expression and the universe

in the experience in the interaction in

the experience

just a few other

other quick things that bhuto is about

it's very much about connection with

nature because part of freeing you from

yourself and finding

the

sense of yourself that's bigger than

just your personal psychology is finding

your connection with nature so you might

try to

embody

animals or wind or plants

or the light or transformation is a very

important part of pluto so you might

transform from a lump of mud

to a being of clay

and then the clay

dries and

flakes off your skin to reveal a being

of light

or you might transform from being a

lobster to being a sphinx

so this idea of transform of connection

within with nature imagery is really

important and this idea of this constant

transformation

is also really important there's also in

bhuto a fascination with the absurd with

the grotesque which can bring a lot of

humor into pluto can be a very humorous

and entertaining performance because

you're not

hesitant to explore that side of things

there's also in bhuto a love of

performing in non-traditional

performance spaces because that's

another way to remove the artifice from

performance to remove the artifice from

your life i'm not going to dance on a

stage where there's a separation between

me and the world i'm gonna dance in the

world

so you might dance on the street you

might dance in a park you might dance

i'm

on a glacier you might dance at the edge

of the ocean

with the waves lapping over you as you

lie in the sand experiencing and

expressing your transformations and

being your transformations

another thing which is important to

bhuto

which separates it from traditional

dance and you know classical western

dance is you're not trying to create an

idealized body

you know it's not up and trying to be

perfect it's

embracing your imperfections and in some

ways it's about dancing from your

imperfections rather than dancing from

any idealized version of what the body

is

again that's that's a very important way

of

getting rid of artifice you know

because i want to say don't try to be

good by which me don't try to be

beautiful don't try to have wonderful

technique try to be authentic embrace

your imperfections embrace your

limitations embrace your idiosyncrasies

and again there's that paradox of

embracing your idiosyncrasies frees you

from yourself it frees you from artifice

it frees you from

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culturally imposed

expectations culturally imposed

limitations

there is a sense in pluto of a rejection

of

traditional values of society you know

looking good

as opposed to being true

another idea that's important to butto

is the idea of the body in crisis

whether that means

dancing

in the cold hanging precariously from

high places or dancing to exhaustion the

idea is that by putting the body into a

state of stress artifice falls away

habitual moving falls away

preconceptions falls away and you can

move authentically

and freely

another idea that's very important to

the idea of exploring gender fluidity

tatsumi hishikata famously said that he

felt like his dead sister was inside him

moving him when he danced kazuono

tried to

channel or embody antonio merced when he

danced his homage to her admiring

argentina many many bhuto artists

explore the different sides of gender

masculine feminine embodying them both

moving through them both

very very common aesthetic in pluto

another idea that's very important to

butto is the idea that what we do it's

something real it's not daily life but

it's not a performance either

the idea is that you've created this

space

a sacred space a ritual space and in

that space

we are going to do something real we are

not going to perform we are going to do

something real either a real ritual a

real interaction

a real

revelation of self something that is not

performance something that transcends

performance something that transcends

daily life

and with all this talk about the

authenticness of the self there's also a

sense of the theatrical umbreo bhuto is

a performance and you'll often see

very theatrical moments and one of the

most magical moments that i ever saw on

stage was this button performance by the

screw button chatenke at theater arto in

san francisco it's the it began

with this

small woman on stage

wearing this large

dress that draped around her

and for some reason

there were these

strings coming from the shoulders of her

dress reaching up to the ceiling of the

stage

and then she just began

to stand up

taller

and then oh that woman isn't so short

and she began to get taller and like

oh wow yeah she's pretty tall and she

began to get taller and whoa i think

maybe no human being could be that tall

and she began to get taller and taller

just standing up and suddenly he was

like she was 10 feet tall

12 feet tall and it was this magical

moment

like

like you were in a dream like you were

in a dream and then she slipped out from

and then she slipped out from under the

dress and those strings that were

holding the dresses kept it there

and that was part of the stage setting

for the rest of the

of the show now clearly

in retrospect underneath that

draping dress or gown there must have

been some kind of step stool

that she was just moving very slowly and

very controlled so you couldn't see the

fact that she was stepping up a step

tool until she was taller than any human

being could possibly be but the moment

was so magical

it served a purpose it created a sense

of dream

dreaminess

a dreamlike sense in the in the audience

created a sense of disorientation in the

audience that hope that opened the

audience up to

to be receptive to what was to come but

it it was a very theatrical moment

one of my butoh teachers koichi tamino

used to dance in this

giant

bubble on stage

that was it was cool looking it was just

a theatrical moment

i saw a go in coma once they performed

indoors but they created

like to perform in very natural settings

they have this performance river that

they do on the banks of a river i saw

them do a performance indoors where they

created the scents with lighting and

with water that they were dancing on the

shores of the deep deep river and it was

lit so that the water looked deep it was

really wonderful magical moment after

the performance i went up to the stage

to see what was going on and the water

was like it was like this this

i don't need to know if it was even an

inch deep but they had lit it and

said it in a way that it looked

like the edge of a river and it was a

magical moment but it was a theatrical

moment

sankeijuku also

has very visually theatrical

performances they have really large sets

they can have wonderful images like sand

pouring down from the roof

or people

dropping in and out of water it's not

only about the presence of the dancers

it's about the visual experience that

you're giving to

the audience or the giving background

with the visual experience that you're

sharing with the audience you're

experiencing with the audience

i think also because of the

of the white makeup you'll often see

this image of red on white and the

contrasting colors is is a common

visual

visual motif that happens in bhutan a

lot

but now i think maybe i'm getting into

minutia

there's also in bhutan nostalgia for

pre-modern times

because and this is the thing i love

about bhuto bhuto

is evoking a timeless world

one that

existed before culture

and will exist after culture

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