Butoh

Butoh is the name of various techniques and forms of contemporary dance inspired by the Ankoku-Butoh movement (ankoku = darkness) active in Japan in the 1950s. Typical aspects of Butoh are the dancer's nudity, the body painted white, the grotesque grimaces inspired by classical Japanese theater, the playfulness of the performances, the alternation of extremely slow movements with frenetic convulsions. There is no typical staging of Butoh. Its origins are traced back to Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno.

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