Abstract The paper examines Butoh (earth dance), an avant garde performance art that originated in Japan following World War II. The paper looks at the history behind the dance. The dance is a form of expression that is purely Japanese and allows the body to speak for itself, through unconscious improvised movement. Butoh is valuable as a training method not only for artists, but for individuals of other disciplines as well, for it frees the body of social constraints. Butoh is actually a hybrid form of art, incorporating elements of dance, mime, theatre, Noh, Kabuki, and even the Chinese arts of Chi kung and Tai chi. By the 1970s Butoh had caught the imagination of many younger artists and had begun to gain worldwide attention. Today it is performed by a number of groups and solo artists in metropolitan cities throughout the world, including Vancouver and Toronto.
From the Paper "Butoh was founded by a rebellious modern dancer named Tatsumi Hijikata and his partner Kazuo Ohno (McLeod). It was first performed in 1959, and is a contemporary form of dance with little reference to either traditional Japanese dances or most Western forms of dance, however it does borrow elements from each (Hermon). Hijikata felt that the Japanese modern dance scene was simply an imitation of the Western mode, thus dissatisfied he sought to find a form of expression that was purely Japanese and also allowed the body to speak for itself, through unconscious improvised movement (McLeod). His first experiments were called Ankoku Butoh, or the Dance of Darkness, which basically referred to what was unknown to humans, including his surroundings and spiritually within (McLeod). Hijikata's dance attempted to touch upon the dormant genetic forces hidden within the "shrinking consciousness of modern man" (McLeod)."
