DEVOTED TO BUTOH.

DEVOTED TO BUTOH VANCOUVER INTERNATIONAL DANCE FESTIVAL PERFORMANCE WORKS ON GRANVILLE ISLAND VANCOUVER, BRITISH COLUMBIA, CANADA OCTOBER 22-NOVEMBER 11, 2000

The atomic bombs dropped on Japan at the end of World War II set the scene for the Japanese avant-dance form called ankoku butoh, "dance of utter darkness." After the war, as the Japanese people struggled to reconcile their traditions with the influx of American and European culture, butoh (as it became known) developed in reaction. Unlike ballet, butoh was interested in bodies that are closer to the earth than to the sky, and the physical experience of peasants toiling in the field was an important inspiration.

The first Vancouver International Dance Festival was dedicated to butoh, with eight companies invited to perform and offer workshops. A screening of films from the Tatsumi Hijikata Memorial Archives opened the Festival, featuring the dark aesthetic of Hijikata, whose 1959 performance of Kinjiki (Forbidden Colors) marks the debut of the art form. According to Yukio Waguri, a direct disciple of Hijikata who offered an evening lecture, the early stages of butoh were about conflict and resistance. Now, with increasing interest worldwide, both the content and the form are broadening, as was evident in the festival's final weeks.

Take Vancouver's Kokoro Dance, the force behind this festival. Artistic Directors Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi are inspired by a unique blend of butoh, ballet and modern dance. In their co-choreographed X-Roads, an hour-long work for thirteen dancers and two musicians, the couple call on their entire dance experience (Bourget danced with Les Grands Ballets Canadiens de Montreal; Hirabayashi began in modern dance) to create physically intelligent, deeply human and impeccably rehearsed choreography. Aside from obvious clues like the women's bare breasts and the shaven heads of some of the performers, the butoh influence is discernible through movement inspired by imagery. In repeated falls to the earth and leaps to the sky, or in the men's muscular quartet of heavy effort, the dancers radiate an identical poetic force, although the detail of their arms and hands vary.

A more classical example of butoh was found in Japan's GooSayTen. In Toki Hime (Princess Toki), Itto Morita has created a stark meditation titled after the Japanese crested ibis, or toki, which is on the verge of extinction. Through magnificent emotional control and no small measure of acrobatic skill, Morita and Mika Takeuchi (GooSayTen's co-artistic directors) evoke mad, dreamlike images of past and present. The two, white-painted, stand bent like a pair of marvelous birds. Morita's eyes are half closed, as if he sees inner worlds. Takeuchi becomes wanton and ecstatic, a spastic Isadora. The score includes drums, chimes, chanting, silence and electronic and disco music in a typical butoh mix.

Kohzensha Butoh Company, also from Japan, presents a direct link to Hijikata through artistic director Waguri. His Bone of Earth 2, performed by Waguri and Asuka Shimada, is impressive in its spare, sensual staging. Their costumes, when shed, decorate the stage. In one section, Waguri crawls out of an earthy brown and scarlet paper cloak, which is left upstage to lend a splash of color while he dances in a red velvet gown. He flutters his eyes and mouth, he gestures and nods to the audience, he poses like a beauty queen and then, monkey-like, becomes an old crone.

Canadians Ziyian Kwan, Jocelyne Montpetit and Denise Fujiwara each performed solos that progressed in slow butoh time. Bourget's choreography for Kwan showcased the dancer's impressive physical control, while Montpetit created and danced two evocative studies of a mature, yearning woman. Denise Fujiwara's intensely pitched Sumida River, based on a Noh play, was choreographed by Natsu Nakajima, who has links to both of butoh's main originators, Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno.

Sweden's SU-EN, otherwise known as Susanna Akerlund, performed Atomic, a young person's punk celebration of the peculiarity of the body. With a large, mushroom-shaped bun perched atop her head, wearing a toxic yellow shift, SU-EN puffed out her cheeks and featured her elbows in a dance to loud music that was described as being about joy.

In Absence of Presence, the five-member Tangentz Performance Group from Hawaii, despite brave enthusiasm, lacked discipline or fire.

When Waguri performed with Hijikata's group, they worked regularly from midnight to dawn, as well as holding down day jobs. Butoh, like all great theatrical dance, demands physical and philosophical rigor and commitment. Otherwise, it's just marking time, however slowly.