BUTOH MA (Tadashi Endo)
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| Tadashi Endo |
There is a certain sense of intangibility to the memory of
our week with Tadashi Endo. A fleeting amalgamation of (seemingly) random
exercises, and, of personal and impersonal anecdotes sprinkled throughout. As I
write this, almost four days removed from our Butoh week and neck-deep in a radically different practice, the happenings of
the week begin to melt into a mass that is hard to distinguish. The single
constantly re-emerging element that I find almost every exercise and anecdote
can be traced back to, is that of the soul/inner
self/Butoh flower.
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| THE CAT!!! |
Tadashi’s exercises
were almost always presented without an overarching context of performer
training. For instance, one day in the Blackbox as we followed Tadashi in the
usual warmup exercises, we found ourselves moving through cat-cow position.
Without any reasoning, we were then led to evolve this position into being cats
ourselves. This was a physical process: balls of the feet on the ground for the
cat’s ability for a springing jump, fingers folded over to emulate the
sensitive caress of the ground of a cat’s paws, and head down for a long,
feline spine. It was somewhere around here that Tadashi gave assistance along
the lines of “swap your bones with that of a cat”. At first this might seem no more
than an obvious thought, until you give special attention to the semantic
choice to use the bones rather than
something like the skin.
(As I write this, there just so happens to be a cat outside
stalking some hapless prey, and there really is a magnetizing quality in the
way it does this.)
Of course, you can emulate the physical exterior, the
actions and movements of the cat all day long, but you won’t really move beyond
a superficial performance until you feel the cat inside you. To step into the
cat’s skin is not enough, as it is
merely a costume.
This philosophy came into play numerous times throughout the
week, as Tadashi would constantly provide us with images as a foundation for an
exercise or activity. There’s a somewhat poetic quality to the use of the
mundane for training – eg. Follow the fly with your eyes, pick the apple from
the tree etc. – but it augments how you engage with the task. Your internal
gears begin to shift and influence your movement from the inside-out, while
also engaging the imagination.
This sort of concept is something familiar to me from the
experiences of directing/being directed, in the form of “games”. Not
necessarily fun or light-hearted as the word “games” would suggest, but highly
useful for booting performers from a state of pretending to do to a state of actual
doing.
For example, say person A is trying to escape the clutches of person B. One way to approach this would be through a thoughtful blocking of the scene, placing A and B spatially to indicate a tension and desire of escape – and this can work well in some cases. However, it could also end up being quite hollow, or, skin-deep. A potentially more effective way to find this tension is to setup the game that actor A needs to leave the room as fast as possible, but without disturbing anyone else in the building, while actor B wins the game by keeping A in the room. Therefore, the tension isn’t being artificially projected, rather it is an active product of their inner desire. Similarly, in the Butoh work, by developing an inner imagination of the image you allow this to flourish, and consequently radiate outwards.
For example, say person A is trying to escape the clutches of person B. One way to approach this would be through a thoughtful blocking of the scene, placing A and B spatially to indicate a tension and desire of escape – and this can work well in some cases. However, it could also end up being quite hollow, or, skin-deep. A potentially more effective way to find this tension is to setup the game that actor A needs to leave the room as fast as possible, but without disturbing anyone else in the building, while actor B wins the game by keeping A in the room. Therefore, the tension isn’t being artificially projected, rather it is an active product of their inner desire. Similarly, in the Butoh work, by developing an inner imagination of the image you allow this to flourish, and consequently radiate outwards.
A small anecdote I feel I should mention was that of the
tango dancers. I’ve forgotten the details (I blame my dwindling short term
memory), but it boiled down to an experience Tadashi had where he watched a
group of older men and women dance the tango beside a group of younger tango
dancers. The younger tango dancers were executing the steps and moves
perfectly, but the older dancers had the soul
of tango within them. This made them infinitely more watchable, despite the
restrictions of their aging bodies.
Seemingly counter-helpful, the point was made that you
cannot ever truly change your soul (or bones, or inner-self) to that of
someone/something else. As Tadashi put it, even if you try your darndest, your
body will likely not be able to 100% reproduce what you observe. Your body
adapts, and what you find is a beautiful merging of the two. This leads to the
idea of your own unique Butoh flower.
This is probably why the idea of learning repertoire is in contradiction with
Butoh practice – maybe you can use someone’s repertoire as a beginning point,
but it will eventually need to take on its own life.
It reminds me of the phrase (that I have heard once a few
months ago and now hear every day in my head) “you will never be Hamlet”.
Potentially cruel to the aspiring actor, but for me it has become a somewhat
freeing mantra. It takes the pressure off to sanitize your body and mind of
your own personality, and instead find the beauty in the joining of the two.
The “Chinese whispers” movement exercise is definitely one I
will use in the future to encourage this philosophy.
There are many more potent takeaways from our week with
Tadashi (which I will list at the bottom of this blog post, as with every
artist), but this is the one that is really resonating with me the most. All
the anecdotes and all the abstract exercises seem to boil down to this
philosophy of the practice.
Do I know what I would do for a Butoh performance if asked
to make one? Probably not. I might honestly be tempted to fall back to the
codified ideas of white painted bodies and slow movement. Tadashi said that a
Butoh dancer can change the seasons on stage, and maybe that’s the point. The
value of this training is not a style, or an aesthetic, or knowing how to fall
to the ground like a tree – it’s rather the nurturing and realisation of your
inner self, your Butoh flower, so that it can radiate outward with such a
strength to make it storm, snow, or bring out the sun.
23|08|19
Day 4, and I’m not sure if I’m really any closer to
understanding exactly what Butoh is. Maybe it is futile to attempt a layering
of classification on the artform. Maybe it just really doesn’t matter.
We’ve since delved into a haiku devising (can it be called
that?) task that we initiated on the first day, but left to the side for a
while. That’s something else that seems to happen a fair bit with the training:
it’s hugely flexible. There have been multiple exclamations from Tadashi that
we will do a certain exercise, for it to never be mentioned again. Keeps you in
a strange state of just engaging with the tasks at hand, since you really don’t
know what’s coming.
Anyway, haikus.
Anyway, haikus.
So, in pairs we threw out a word each, that we then would
relate to eachother and make into a haiku poem. For myself and Paolo, it was “antlers”
and “winter” – in the grand scheme of everything, those two do somewhat happen
to be near eachother on the spectrum, although Tadashi stressed it’s more
interesting when they have no relation. I can totally agree with this. Go for
the not-obvious, it’s way juicier.
What followed in essence was an improvisation in pairs, with
a set starting position and very little else. The exercise was jarring without
a clear directive or goal, except to improvise your haiku in abstract movement.
An extremely open, yet wildly difficult task at first. Then, you repeat, and
discuss, and repeat, and discuss, and you can almost eventually see the poem in
there.
This brings me to Butoh’s relationship with music, something
that came very much to the fore of my mind today. While performing/rehearsing/devising
the haikus, Tadashi emphasised that the music is quite important to the
audience’s perception of the work, YET to not let the music carry you. This was
in contrast to the work of the other day, which was all about moving as analogously
to the music as possible. It’s all training, so it doesn’t have to match up,
but it’s very different from my personal way of using sound.
This also became interesting when viewing a recording of
Tadashi’s tribute to Pina Bausch, where each musical track (often a pre-made
track, I’m assuming) would play for each section of the movement. This led to
me feeling like the performance was quite discontiguous, and that each track
was vying for its own artistic representation, over the sum of the performance itself.
I’m curious to view more Butoh to see how consistent this is within the
artform, and see if I can negotiate my personal reservations on the choice.
22|08|19
There’s an unusually deep reverence that one cannot help but
have for (the insanely nimble and fit) Tadashi Endo and his work. Through my
own training his name has become synonymous with Butoh dance, not only as the
master of my own teacher, but also from external readings and research, yet the
‘real-life’ experience of training with him is exponentially distant from the
expectation.
Part dance-gym, part anecdotal life lesson seminar, Tadashi has openly challenged the idea that the ‘warmup’ need be different to the ‘work’ or ‘rehearsal’. In comparison to being fresh from Ryen’s relatively prescriptive warmup->exercises->devising classifications in the room, our Butoh training so far does not seem to subscribe to any logical flow or goal. It’s very lateral. I’ll reflect on this particular aspect of this training and how it relates to the philosophy/practice of Butoh in another entry (maybe).
Part dance-gym, part anecdotal life lesson seminar, Tadashi has openly challenged the idea that the ‘warmup’ need be different to the ‘work’ or ‘rehearsal’. In comparison to being fresh from Ryen’s relatively prescriptive warmup->exercises->devising classifications in the room, our Butoh training so far does not seem to subscribe to any logical flow or goal. It’s very lateral. I’ll reflect on this particular aspect of this training and how it relates to the philosophy/practice of Butoh in another entry (maybe).
As my previous teacher was a student and company member with
Tadashi, there’s a lot of familiarity
coming through the work we’re doing. Similar principles, same lack of explicit
justification on why – it seems to be
a process that demands a less intellectual approach, and a more doing approach. On reflection, Tadashi has
quite actively peppered in tidbits of information that does assist with my active
learning, but I already can tell this really is a style that requires more than
a week of masterclasses to truly be changed by it.
Tadashi openly jokes that Butoh is difficult when it comes
to concrete definitions. Sure, being bald, painted white, is often in Butoh – but it isn’t necessarily
Butoh. Slow, grotesque movement is often in
Butoh – but it also isn’t necessarily Butoh. This lack of definition is
going to be my excuse as to why my blog entries this week are going to be all
over the place, however, there is a strongly recurring notion within all that
we are doing: it’s all about the soul. Having a ‘sense’ of what you are on stage
is enough, the audience is active and can find their own meaning. A lot of
exercises encourage an internal tension, that then translates outwards – that is
to say, the physical movements themselves are not the important element, it is
the sense of what you do. Sounds a
heck of a lot familiar to one of the biggest takeaways from Gecko’s work: “it’s
not so much a matter of the physical action itself, as it is the quality in
which you perform it” (Stay, Marshall, 2019).
I spy with my little eye a pattern developing.
I spy with my little eye a pattern developing.
WHAT
- Inner tension
- Not about looking for something, just not hiding it
- Putting yourself in a state where something could happen
- No such thing as ‘Butoh’
- Working for yourself
- Finding the new every time you do it
- Your own Butoh flower
- Elements of the soul
- If you are totally happy you don’t dance
- Zen story (all stories, really)
- Visual body-non visual soul
- Haiku, randomness of the 2 words
- Swapping bones with the cat
- You can’t dance like someone else, even if you do their movement exactly (you can’t ever be someone else)
- A good butoh dancer changes the energy, and the season
- Connected to images and the imagination - everything
- Resonance game lying down