Публикую переписку с танцором буто Марко Нектаном, Сербия.
Себя я переводила через переводчик, так что извините за мой английский-но вроде меня понимали))
Yana:
Marco, I wanted to ask you something, I've been wanting to ask someone for a long time. You said that these exercises themselves can be a performance-for example, take the movement in oil-in an imaginary oil environment. Usually such exercises lead to chaotic movement. That is, for example, I will not be able to repeat what I did in this exercise just now. The specifics are lost. Can chaos be a performance? After all, the performance is made for the audience-will the audience get tired of the chaos? Is improvisation a necessary element of buto? And if not, how do I get rid of it? For example, your performances look well thought out, it doesn't look like you're improvising a lot. You look like you know what you're doing. Your actions are not random.
Мarco:
Oil is about oil breathing - you imagine that air around you is made of oil or honey (some tick fluid element), and breath slow like oil is licking in your nous. After a while, your movement will slow down. Follow the rhythm of your breathing. Breath like this in every exercise. Ground and balance and then you do exercise.
The world was created in chaos - out of chaos great creation come from. So it is natural to be chaotic in beginning. You improvise, and improvise and learn from this improvisation, and develop the new movement. And when you develop a new movement you use your creativity and combine in choreography. There are so many ways of choreography - you can just make a form and bonds and inside you improvise, that way chaos won't come out.
Form every exercise you can develop performance - if you have a presence, the audience won't be bored. The first rule is - do not think about our audience going to be bored!? You think about what is going inside of you! Be present in the moment, in the movement. And the audience will feel.
You practice the "Time" exercises and this way you develop a strong presence, and that is the key.
When you have a presence, everything you do will be tamed, and chaos would transform into creation.
have you understood?
Y:
Yes apparently understood.
So improvisation is used to find certain solutions?
M:
You can start with impro. but then you develop choreography out of it.
Or you can also just improvise, but then you should think about the beginning, highlight, and ending. You make a form and then improvise inside.
But, performance art and butoh are progressive art so you can experiment with forms. The important is for you to cack the essence of butoh, to understand the substance, you work on choreography.
In this module, we are working on developing your own original movement. And if you like to continue, the II module is about choreography.
Butoh and performance art rebel from classical arts, so the rules are different, we make the rules. It is not simple to answer this question.
For now, you experiment and observe what you feel and see. When you find something interesting record so that in the future you can use it for your original choreography.
Y:
I carefully watched the movie you recommended today.
First of all, I haven't seen it, and thank you.
I want to ask this question: don't you think that the historical butoh is the past and the modern world requires a change of style and its adaptation to modern problems? After all, today there are other problems in the yard, and not those that provoked the appearance of butoh. After all, the dance world has already become different and in many ways modern (contemporary) dance taken forms
and ideas that were characteristic of butoh in the past. Should the Butoh develop? Does it need to change? I'm interested in your opinion.
M:
Butoh opens the door to the future that is not explored enough... It started after WW II but we haven't changed... No contemporary art offer that deep approach as butoh. Of course, what we do is not the same as butoh then, but it is up to the creator how it will call it.
Artists makes art, I offer my approach to something that has a foundation in butoh. I think it is still new and futuristic. Especially now...
Y:
Another question is: during improvisation, I can be in the flow-and how do I evaluate what I'm doing? Am I making the right moves? How do I determine this? Do I just need to follow my feelings or do I still need to pay attention to some movement parameters? What creates my movements?
M:
how do I evaluate what I'm doing? - You can make a video of impro, and then you watch, or just meditate about what you did...
Am I making the right moves? - there is no right or wrong moves - the idea is to search for unique, and original...
How do I determine this? - you can send me video of your work so i can give you feedback!
Do I just need to follow my feelings or do I still need to pay attention to some movement parameters? - you can fallow your feelings, but pay attentin on what i say in scripts and on classes...
What creates my movements? - some inner impulse, resonance...
Y:
Hello!
I want to ask a question that I often hear myself. You probably know the band " Sankai Juku".
If you look at them, you can see that they have a set choreography, as they often perform synchronous actions.
How can it be that they perform the same thing? if the essence of butoh is the transfer of internal state?
It can't be the same condition for different people, can it?
How do you even put on productions in butoh?
M:
Yes, Shankai Juku is all choreographed, and often butoh dancers criticize them for that reason. Even Hijicata tough that they go far from the original idea. But butoh has so many faces and forms, all are great art, and personal. You can choreograph or not, it is up to you - or even combine.
The question about choreography and production of butoh work I am dealing in the second and third modules of this training. Now we focus on our practice for it self to cack the essence.
Y:
Yes, indeed, Hijikata, too, was given the choreography-for example if you take the play "Hosotan".
M:
Yes he was, of course, but not like Shankai Juko do it! Way of butoh choreography is not like other ways, it is more organic, and it needs to come from the darkness of yourself... I did demonstrate it in our live exercises, I give you so many visualizations, this is how it is done it.
Y:
I noticed that many different butoh dancers repeat their movements in improvisations. That is, there are often similar moments, the same poses. So it turns out that butoh has a certain characteristic dance vocabulary? And that all people try to dance butoh comes out the same and gets a similar shape. Have you ever noticed this? And maybe it makes sense to take these ready-made forms? Or not? Or should I come to them myself? Or am I wrong at all?
М:
Thank you for the questions. I will make the study of this. So let me see:
Yes I know that many dancers use movement and postures and that is ok, you can import some elements from other dances. But as you see many use elements from Noguchi Taiso - that is a system of athletic movement developed almost in the same period as butoh. When butoh teachers start to travel the world they start using Naguchi as warmup exercises. So many dancers just use Noguchi method to build there choreography. Many just copy Tatsumi Hijicatas performances and posture. The idea is that this is wrong and that you should develop your own, original postures and movement. As I was saying, this training is about this, about originality. So, you continue research and make your own method, and postures and movement. You don't have to look like other butoh dancers, you don't have to have their movement. But you have free will to import elements from other dances, folk dances, from other methods...
Hijicata created butoh to make original dance - you can use his postures, but that is Hijicata, and he and Kazuo Ohno and Yoshito Ohno repeated so many times that copying others is not original, you should make your own. The other problem is that many Japanese dancers have no ideas about Butoh, but they find the opportunity to earn some money when they travel, so they just teache butoh like classical ballet, coping some choreography. And this is what creates the confusion. I have this experience (living in Eastern Europe, many fake things come this way).
You work on your own dance! If it is original and unique, and it comes from a place in between, from the deep darkness of your being, then that is butoh!
Y:
Do you think that dance training is important for butoh dance? You probably teach a lot, can you tell me if there is a difference between people who are engaged in dance and those who go to butoh from scratch?
M:
I don't believe in classical training - you should practice Focus, Grounding, and somebody exercises like Yoga, Qigong... But repeating Butoh as Ballet is not that good. It is good to research, but for that, it is enough a few times a week, but the bodywork is good to do every day.
There is a difference between those who are freer and those who still hold to there daily mind, ego, and scare. And sometimes experienced dancers don't go so deep, and sometimes beginners could go deep... I call that freedom and deepness a talent in butoh. Butoh is still progressive, and it is paradoxical and different from other dance forms and ways of practice...
Y:
Marco, Thank you for your answers!
Your answers may be valuable not only for me! In my opinion, there is really a lot of confusion in butoh.
М:
Well, butoh is still a new art form, we all are still exploring its possibilities. So of course there are so many confusions!
