Atsushi Takenouchi - JINEN Butoh

WORKSHOP & PERFORMANCE
Butoh-byo
IN PARIS (FRANCE)


4th Jan 06 - 20th Jan 06
At Bertin Poirée



Photos by Hélène Degrandpré, Laci Zajac, Nefeli Skarmea and Yuko Ota





"Butoh", in the ancien sense, signifies to dance like the wind (bu)
and to tread the ground (toh). "Byo" signifies disease.
Then, "Butoh" designates for me the disease of impossibility to stop dancing until death.
I believe all dance which lives the ultimate breath of the life in the front of the death is "Butoh-Byo".

Atsushi Takenouchi


- - - - -


This time, we got a very intensive work of fifteen days.
We had been twenty-nine participants in this workshop, and
we had started to practice in view of the spectacle from the first day.

Some times we went out to make a procession in front of the Centre Georges Pompidou.
In spite of the cold of January, all had been glad to dance outside; we had preferred it
almost to dancing in the studio.

































































At the reheasal


















We were divided into two groups: the Wind group and the Ground group.
Everyone chose his group by preferance. However, as the days went on,
we discovered that who danced like the fragile air were in the Wind group
and who was powerful like magma belonged to the Ground group.



We had two days of presentation, and so, in an evening, a group had a procession
performance for a hour, and then went to take up each position in the butoh human
exposition at the entrance of the theatre, while the another group was preparing and
waiting the public on the stage...


































































In this workshop, the theme was to dance as/with souls of rejected people from the society:
street children, abandoned old men, blind and little girl, war victims, injured people,
mother who lost her child or her husband, soldiers addicted to drug for killing against his wish
the sick kept in isolation, prostitute, mendicants, or, animals, forests, deities in front
of extermination... Lives forgotten in the darkness. Putting these souls in ourselves,
we had danced and it became prayer to conduct them to the brightness.

Because of the darkness, does the light shine more, because of the light, is the darkness deeper?
At their meeting, we live and dance.