笠井叡 舞踏をはじめて <11>
Akira Kasai Begins Butoh <11>
Akira Kasai studied under Kazuo Ohno, interacted with Tatsumi Hijikata, and gave birth to the word "butoh". He will talk about his life and his own butoh.
In 1969, I gave a solo recital “Tannhäuser” at the Kosei-Nenkin Kaikan. I danced Richard Wagner for the first time. Mr. Natsuyuki Nakanishi participated as a stage designer.
Mr. Shibusawa contributed to the flyer of “Tannhäuser”. “Our life, which must continue to divide and rebel without end, has already despaired of the idea and despaired of the body ......”. Those were the very times. “We start everything not with words, but with the body. It is butoh dancers who have that privilege in a good sense or bad sense.” This work was created with the most straightforward image of that.
There is a picture of a girl on the flyer, which was originally a print that Mr. Masuo Ikeda bought in Italy when he traveled in Europe, and he gave it to Mr. Shibusawa as a gift because it was so beautiful. I found it in Mr. Shibusawa's room and asked him to let me use it for the flyer of the upcoming performance, and Mr. Natsuyuki Nakanishi bound it for me. However, because there was a picture of a girl's genitalia in it, I was accused of indecent exposure and was summoned to the Yotsuya police station. The police told me, “This is no good,” but I had already sent out hundreds of flyers, so there was nothing I could do about it.
Mr. Nakanishi had done the art for Mr. Hijikata's stage production of “Rose-colored Dance,” and because of that I have asked him to do the art for several of my productions, including “Tannhäuser.” For this production, Mr. Nakanishi drew two human hands on a large panel and placed them at the back of the stage as artwork. From a distance, the hands look like wings. Not that it has anything to do with feathers, but in “Tannhäuser” I connected two or three pigeons and flew them around in the theater.
The stage is all white. The floor is all white, too, and there is a white drop curtain. The four corners of the stage are covered with white cloth, and when the performance begins, the cloth is pulled up diagonally over the audience's heads from the rear of the hall. This was my idea, but since we made it ourselves, it was really hard work, and just putting on the sewing machine was a challenge.
One of the main themes of the work was “The Legend of Tannhäuser. Tannhäuser.” spends his days of pleasure on the hills of Venus, and when he has reached the height of his sexuality, he descends the mountain, looks back on his life, and once again enters the path of martyrdom. Another axis was Wagner's piece “Tannhäuser,” in which I danced Richard Wagner for the first time.
In January 1972, I danced “Tannhäuser” again as a soloist. This time, I danced “Tannhäuser” in memory of Mr. Yukio Mishima, who died in 1970. I danced in a khaki-colored Japanese army uniform, wearing a military cap and carrying a real Japanese sword. The Japanese sword was probably a result of the shock of Mr. Mishima's death.
Mr. Mishima died of seppuku. I heard the news when I was loading the blocks of the Tenshikan. I do not believe that Mr. Mishima's act solved anything at all, and I do not think it was a political movement. My opinion is that his act was a way for Mr. Mishima to settle his own personal issues with Japan.
In 1968, Mr. Hijikata created a work entitled “Tatsumi Hijikata and the Japanese,” in which he tried to show a connection with Japan in some way. I feel that Mr. Mishima's act was similar to that, although in a different direction. If you ask whether the individual is more important or Japan is more important, Mr. Mishima is a person who cares more about Japan than about the individual. Mr. Shibusawa wrote a review about this work, but I think he himself rather thought that the individual is important, not Japan.
In April 1971, I built a handmade rehearsal hall in a corner of my house and named it “Tenshikan”. Many young people gathered there, and it produced Butoh dancers.
In the late 1960s, I held performances almost once a year. When I hold one meeting, it takes me about a year to digest it in my mind. Once a year was a good pace for me, but after “Tannhäuser,” I had to stop solo performances for a while.
Somehow around that time, various people began to gather around me, and it became difficult for me to continue my solo activities. As for me, I had no choice but to accept them, and I built a small rehearsal hall in a space beside my house in Kokubunji and named it “Tenshikan”. The present building is the one after rebuilding, and in the beginning it was a more compact building with a rugged, Romanesque architecture. It was almost entirely handmade except for the electrical wiring. I built it with my own hands, though we were amateurs, by piling up blocks one by one with young people who gathered at my place.
It was my father who originally purchased this land. When he was a judge at the Sapporo High Court, he thought that in a few years he would have to move to another place, and that his next post would probably be in Tokyo. However, my father died at the age of 41, and he never lived here.
The house was built in 1954, and was rebuilt to the current house in 2013. The current house is inspired by the house of Mr. Shibusawa. The ceiling of Mr. Shibusawa's house is very high with a vaulted ceiling, and I have long wanted to live in such a house and gave it shape.
Most of the people who initially gathered at Tenshikan were students. Many of them came to my performances or read my writings in magazines and found them interesting. The student movement was still very active at that time, and many of them belonged to groups called the Red Army or left-wing extremists. In any case, my stance was that I would not reject anyone who came.
I don't know if everyone was clearly aware of this, but I feel that many people wanted to talk to themselves with their bodies before creating words. There was no one who wanted to be a dancer or make a career out of it. However, there were people who later became professional dancers, such as Ms. Setsuko Yamada and Mr. Kota Yamazaki. At the time, Mr. Yamazaki had just graduated from high school and moved to Tokyo from Niigata, and Ms. Setsuko was a student in the theater department at Meiji University. At first, Ms. Setsuko could not dance at all, and although she would come to the rehearsal hall, she would remain standing by the wall. She probably wanted to be there. We talked, but I don't think she did any dancing for about two years. There were also Mr. Josaku Sugita, a student at Keio University, Masahide Omori, the leader of Tenrouseido, and many other students from Musashino Art University due to the location.
We rehearsed about four times a week. Each rehearsal lasted two to three hours. Because of the loud noise we made, we gradually became disliked by the people around us, and finally our neighbors moved out. I felt bad about that.
A lot of people came, but I don't really like groups, so I had no desire to organize anything at all. I didn't do anything like teaching at all since I took a stance that they can move if they want to do and they can keep sitting if they don't want to move. I didn't teach them anything, so they danced as they saw me dance.
I didn't give them any guidance; I just told them to do what they wanted to do. However, when people began to gather, I had to be instructive in many ways. My quidance was not “you should do this way” but “you can do as you want to do” If there are 10 people, the way of dancing is different for each of them. I believe that the best dance is the one in which what each person has is naturally drawn out from within himself/herself, so I tried to draw out only what came out purely from his/her own body. I never once told them what they should do in terms of dancing. I just danced with them.
It was like meeting everyone every day. We often talked outside of rehearsals. I remember each of us talking about things like, “Why did you start dancing?
In April 1971, Tenshikan was established and the following month we held the “Open Meeting”. My mother played the organ and everyone danced as they liked. It was a free meeting where everyone did what they wanted to do and showed it to the people who had gathered.
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Profile
Butoh dancer and choreographer, who became friends with Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno at a young age in the 1960s, and gave numerous solo butoh performances mainly in Tokyo and elsewhere. In the 1970's, operated Tenshikan Butoh dance school where he trained numerous butoh dansers. From 1979 to 1985, studied abroad to study in Germany.Studied Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophy and eurythmy. After returning to Japan, he did not perform on stage and was away from the dance world for 15 years, but returned to the stage with "Seraphita". Since then, he has given numerous performances in Japan and abroad, and has been praised as "the Nijinsky of Butoh". His masterpiece "Pollen Revolution" was performed in various cities around the world. He has created works in Berlin, Rome, New York, Angers, the Centre National de Danse Contemporaine de France, and elsewhere. https://akirakasai.com