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Want to read more about butoh? Here are some links to sites about butoh as an art form and some sites of butoh companies.

Butoh Net
Includes an article "Defining Butoh."

The World of Butoh Dance
Lots of links to reviews and articles

Butoh - The Dance of Darkness
Brief, poetic description of Butoh.

What is Butoh?
An Argentine site (in English)

Flesh and Blood Mystery Theater
Material about Butoh and Butoh artists

A Genealogy of Butoh
Just what it says, complete with family tree.

Collapsing Silence
A history of Butoh, with bibliography and some stunning photos.

Don McLeod's History of Butoh

Butoh: Dance of Darkness
A brief article, originally published in Dutch, by Harmen Sikkenga.

July 14, 2003

 

What's on This Week?
by Rachel Howard

Inspired Absurdity from Japan
Dairakudakan
June 27
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
By Rita Felciano

Company choreographer Kumotaro Mukai's Kochuten: Paradise in a Jar, was a disciplined, tightly structured extravaganza of non-sequiturs that those lucky enough to have been in attendance are not likely to forget very soon. It was a show as non-sensical as it was creepy, full of imagery that its performers yanked out of context with the greatest of glee, constantly setting up expectations only to undercut them. Not least of Kochuten's accomplishments was a smart use of music which ranged from Euro-pop to avantgarde classical to Bob Marley to movie favorites.

Speed-date a composer
Summerfest
July 12
McKenna Theater
By Paul Parish

McKenna Theater seats probably 500-600. Its barrel-vaulted roof squats on the audience like the roof of a cave, and I always feel the curtain is going to go up and reveal an aquarium; a man who knows it better says he always thinks he's at Disneyland, and that the show will start with sci-fi effects hurling you into the arena like "Fantastic Voyage."

Which made it very refreshing that the second half (the "Amy" show, for reasons which will be revealed) opened with Spiraling Ahead: a group of very fine Cunninghamesque dancers dressed in sherbet colors, stalking about like popsicles, doing quirky things at odd times against a cyclorama that was loveliest when it was purple, to music that had the effect of a shimmering vibraphone. Choreography by Amy Helmstetter, music by Nurit Jugend.

          
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