Ankoku Butoh Dancer

Date

1992

Description

Creator of the image: Ron Fricke (Director)
Date of the image creation: 1992
Medium of the image: Film
Person depicted: Japanese Butoh performer

Similar to its sister film Samsara, Baraka, is a non-narrative, documentary film that explores a kaleidoscopic vision of nature: animals, landscapes, humans, technology, tribes, and mega-cities. The visually stunning film was shot in 24 countries on six continents over a 14-month period on 70mm Todd-AO film format. It was the first film to be resorted and scanned at 8K resolution. The scene in this image is in Tokyo, and features Japanese Butoh performers.

The New York Times described the dance form as a theatre of protest: ‘full body paint (white or dark or gold), near or complete nudity, shaved heads, grotesque costumes, clawed hands, rolled-up eyes and mouths opened in silent screams ... Hijikata called his performance style Ankoku Butoh, or “dance of darkness and gloom”. Two Japanese characters make up the word butoh: bu for dance, toh for step ... Hijikata was influenced early in his career by Dadaism and Surrealism and inspired by the dictum of Antonin Artaud, the French experimental-theater director, to make theater that was crude. After this initial phase, however, the rural culture of his youth became the dominant influence’ (1 November 1987).

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