笠井叡 舞踏をはじめて ＜19＞
Akira Kasai Begins Butoh <19>
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.
I studied the style of eurythmy in Germany and distanced myself from the world of butoh.
Generally speaking, dance can be either improvised, choreographed, or a traditional style. In that sense, eurythmy is neither improvised nor choreographed, but has its own style of eurythmy. Ballet is a work of art through the combination of the pas, but eurythmy is different from that. Ballet pas, such as arabesques and pirouettes, are not choreography but a ballet style, a prototype for choreography. In that sense, all the movements of eurythmy are a style, and they are all predetermined.
Words are uttered one by one and then transformed into movements. This is the first practice of eurythmy movements. Each letter of the alphabet has its own form of energy flow, so saying the letter "a" results in an "a" movement, and saying "e" results in an "e" movement. The vowel "a" represents the Roman letter "A" with the arms spreading out from a point, the "u" represents a parallel, the "e" represents two straight lines intersecting, and the "o" represents a sphere ....... this way, upon vocalizing, you convey the power of sound with body movements.
In the first year, students learn the connection between voice and movement through basic exercises in vocalization and body movement while voicing basic vowels and consonants. As students become more comfortable, they spend four years practicing vocalization and its movements, such as dancing poems with eurythmy and using novels and critiques to vocalize with their entire bodies.
Eurythmy is like a dance born out of academia, and it can orient humans to a certain rigorous world that cannot be very well reached by improvisational dance. We learn such things not only through physical training, but also through classroom study. The improvisational dance I was working on before going to Germany was interesting, but I had my doubts about whether it was possible to improvise without any knowledge of the world of established styles and forms. At the same time, the problem I had the hardest time coming to terms with was the fact that eurythmy is not choreography, but a style. Because of this, there was a tendency to break down the butoh-like body and to deprive it of the power of improvisation, which was the most difficult part for me. Style has an educational meaning, but if that is all you can do, it is certainly not very interesting to watch. It is more interesting to watch something without style. However, if we don't deal with the physical theory properly, the dances will become uninteresting.
The style of eurythmy is almost the same as the form of sound. By combining vowel and consonant sounds, words, conversations, and poems are made into movement forms. There is no element of improvisation involved. It is the opposite of improvisation. Because it is created from a style, the physicality is completely different from that of improvised movement such as butoh. Butoh for me is not a style, but something that uses the energy of the body directly without relying on words, something that produces creative power. But when I studied eurythmy, I could only use the energy of my body in the direction of words. I could no longer really use my creative power. I could no longer come to terms with Butoh. The butoh body that I had created with Mr. Ohno and Mr. Hijikata was once broken.
For me, it might have been enough to dance butoh improvisationally. However, I was still attracted to the opposite. It was not that I liked it, but since I went to Germany, I decided to do it until I was satisfied with it, and in the end, it took me six years.
In May 1980, I appeared at the Nancy International Theater Festival in France. A program was organized to bring together Japanese butoh dancers, and I was invited along with Kazuo Ohno, Min Tanaka, and Sankai Juku.
At the time I was in the middle of studying eurythmy in Germany, and it had been a long time since I had danced butoh in France. My piece was improvised and used two Pink Floyd songs. My own physical sensations made me move in a way that I could not go any further. I was dancing on stage, very satisfied in my own way. But as I was dancing, the audience, which had been large in number at first, gradually left, and by the time it was over, more than half of them were gone. At that time, I felt a big gap between my sense of dancing and that of the audience. After the performance, a photographer Mr. Teijiro Kamiyama, who was in the audience, told me, "Mr. Kasai, that was great. But it will take another 50 years for the French to understand your dance." He was someone who had been watching my dancing for a long time.
The exact opposite phenomenon occurred at my maiden recital in 1966. As I danced, I thought to myself, "This is no good". But the audience was unusually excited. On the other hand, when I had reached my best, the audience rejected it and left. After the performance, I thought deeply about this and decided to stay away from butoh for a while. I felt that even if I stayed in the world of improvisation, I would never be able to do anything more than that. I thought I might as well quit the stage. So I left the improvisational world of butoh and entered the stylistic world of eurythmy. I decided to make a complete break with butoh. I decided that I would never perform again.
Meanwhile, at the same Nancy International Theater Festival, Mr. Ohno danced "Ode to La Argentina," which was accepted worldwide. Producers from all over the world who came to the festival asked him to come to their theaters, and from there Mr. Ohno began to perform dozens of times a year. The Nancy International Theater Festival was the catalyst for Mr. Ohno's international expansion, and he became the "Ohno of the world".
A solo performance at the Stuttgart Tribune in February of the same year, prior to the Nancy International Theater Festival, was another opportunity for me to leave Butoh. The newspaper review of the performance was very positive and wrote a very good article, but I felt that it would be the same even if I continued. I felt that there was no point in showing what I thought to the German people, and that what I should do was to absorb what I did not know from the Germans. I no longer wanted to please the German people through self-expression, and I decided that I should learn about a Europe that I did not know.
I decided to part ways with Butoh and entered the world of eurythmy. However, eurythmy and butoh have a great deal in common in terms of "synesthesia," which is a very important part of both. Sight and touch are two different senses, but they are connected deep within the body. This is what is called synesthesia. For example, in butoh dancing, there is a term called "dancing colors". One of the basics of butoh is to replace various senses with other senses, such as "hearing" with the tips of one's toes and "seeing" with the tips of one's fingers. Butoh is synesthesia. When you are on stage, you do not just stand there, but you work on the sense of touch with the soles of your feet to create a connection between the floor and your body, or you look at the floor with the soles of your feet as your eyes. This kind of movement is not found in so-called dance, and it is this unique synesthesia that makes butoh so interesting.
Eurythmy also places great importance on the senses, and it takes a long time, one to two years, just to practice the senses and develop their power. The practice of the senses is very deep and requires a lot of practice.
Dance practice is essentially sensous. What is absolutely necessary is sensation, never momentum. It does not matter if some dance troupe shows off their superb technique or not. The most important aspect is not how you exercise, but whether you can use your senses. Exercise does not elevate us; we are reborn when we regain the function of our senses. The important thing is to awaken the power of the senses.
Long ago, in the Nara-Heian period, the people of the world derived great energy from looking at the blue sky, which was their only source of unsurpassed joy. They would look at the blue sky and dance with that joy. Dancers who are trying to do this in a proper way today is butoh dancers, which is also common to eurythmy. When I moved from butoh to eurythmy, people said, "Kasai has abandoned Tenshikan". But whether it is butoh or eurythmy, they may both be important in terms of developing the power of the senses.
Continue to Akira Kasai Begins Butoh <20>.
Profile
Akira Kasai
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