Atsushi Takenouchi - JINEN Butoh

 

WORKSHOP & PERFORMANCE
Vie et Mort - Mandala of transmigration
IN PARIS (FRANCE)

8th Jan 07 - 24th Jan 06
At Bertin Poirée

 

When I die, who knows in whom I will be born again, in what kind of world and who I was before entering my mother¹s womb?
If human life lasts 70 years, then I was already living 70 years ago, I have lived ten times over the past 700 years,
and one hundred times over the past 7,000 years. Maybe it will be the same for my lives to come in 70 years or 7,000 years.
Thus, I contain within me a hundred beings from both past and future, and I go on flowing like a quiet 10,000 year-old river.
How did these beings live and die, I wonder. Some of them were carried off by wars, epidemics, or mental diseases,
without transmitting what they wished to. Others died plagued by their crimes, some lost their children or parents,
others left the world to embrace religion, still others embarked on an exploration of new worlds.
All of them were seeking Truth and Liberation of the Soul. All of them faced death,
whether in joy and hope while approaching their goal or deeply disheartened by their failures.
I feel in my body their wordless cries and, becoming them, I dance. All these souls - and mine as well
- which have succeeded one another and have been sealed in darkness for 10,000 years,
I embrace them all as manifestations of true Life.
I liberate them and go on dancing their uniqueness until they become radiant Light.
Nobody knows whether former lives and future lives exist, but in dying, we go on nourishing Life,
like a 10,000 year-old river which began as a spring deep in the earth and ends its long journey united with the vast ocean.
All existences indefinitely repeat the cycle of Life and Death. By unconditionally embracing the yin and the yang,
the darkness and the light in all these lives - and mine, as well - I liberate my own soul and dance a Requiem for beings who endure transmigration.

Atsushi Takenouchi

 

photo: Georges Karam, Bruno Salvador, Yuko Ota