Butoh
Japanese dance theatre resisting fixity, born from post-war avant-garde.
Butoh (舞踏, Butō) is a Japanese dance-theatre form that covers a wide range of activities, techniques, and reasons for dancing, performing, or moving. It first emerged in 1959, after World War II, through the partnership of two key founders: Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno. The art resists being pinned down and is hard to define; Hijikata himself was distressed by efforts to formalize it. Common elements include playful and grotesque imagery, taboo subjects, and extreme or absurd settings. Performers traditionally wear white body makeup and move in slow, hyper-controlled ways. Over time, butoh groups have formed around the world, each with its own aesthetic goals and intentions.
The first butoh piece, *Forbidden Colors* (Kinjiki) by Hijikata, debuted at a dance festival in 1959. Based on Yukio Mishima’s novel of the same name, it dealt with the taboo of homosexuality and ended with a live chicken held between the legs of Yoshito Ohno, Kazuo Ohno’s son, after which Hijikata chased Yoshito off the stage in darkness. Audience outrage led to Hijikata being banned from the festival, cementing his reputation as an iconoclast. Early performances were called “Dance Experience” in English. In the early 1960s, Hijikata used the term “Ankoku-Buyou” (dance of darkness) for his work, later swapping “buyo”—a word tied to Japanese classical dance—for “butoh,” an older term originally used for European ballroom dancing.
Butoh arose in post-World War II Japan, “in the protective shadow of the 1950s and 1960s avant-garde.” A key motivation was Hijikata’s reaction against the Japanese dance scene, which he felt copied the West too much and stuck to traditional forms like Noh. He wanted to turn away from Western ballet and modern dance, creating a new aesthetic that embraced the “squat, earthbound physique” and the natural movements of ordinary people. This impulse took shape in the early movement “ankoku butō” (dance of darkness), built on crude physical gestures and uncouth habits—a direct assault on the refinement (miyabi) and understatement (shibui) prized in Japanese aesthetics.
In later work, Hijikata kept subverting conventional dance ideas. Inspired by writers like Yukio Mishima, Comte de Lautréamont, Antonin Artaud, Jean Genet, and Marquis de Sade, he explored grotesquerie, darkness, and decay. He also worked on transforming the human body into other forms, such as a
- field
- Dance theatre
- nationality
- Japanese
- known_for
- Resisting fixity, grotesque imagery, white body makeup, slow hyper-controlled motion
- founders
- Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno
- first_performance
- 1959, Forbidden Colors (Kinjiki)
Lore & Background
Butoh first appeared in post-World War II Japan in 1959, under the collaboration of Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, 'in the protective shadow of the 1950s and 1960s avant-garde'. A key impetus was a reaction against the Japanese dance scene, which Hijikata felt was overly based on imitating the West and following traditional styles like Noh. He sought to 'turn away from the Western styles of dance, ballet and modern' and create a new aesthetic embracing the 'squat, earthbound physique' and 'natural movements of the common folk'. This desire found form in the early movement of 'ankoku butō' (暗黒舞踏), meaning 'dance of darkness', built on a vocabulary of 'crude physical gestures and uncouth habits' as a direct assault on refinement and understatement valued in Japanese aesthetics.
The first butoh piece, Forbidden Colors (禁色, Kinjiki) by Tatsumi Hijikata, premiered at a dance festival in 1959. Based on the novel by Yukio Mishima, it explored the taboo of homosexuality and ended with a live chicken being held between the legs of Kazuo Ohno's son Yoshito Ohno, after which Hijikata chased Yoshito off the stage in darkness. Audience outrage led to Hijikata being banned from the festival, establishing him as an iconoclast. Hijikata later changed the term from 'Ankoku-Buyou' to 'butoh', a long-discarded word for dance that originally meant European ballroom dancing. He developed a poetic and surreal choreographic language called butoh-fu to help dancers transform into other states of being.
Reader's Guide
Butoh's significance lies in its radical break from both Western and traditional Japanese dance forms, emerging as a post-war avant-garde movement that embraced darkness, grotesquerie, and taboo subjects. Its founders, Hijikata and Ohno, developed distinct teaching styles—Hijikata as a 'fearsome technician' and Ohno as a 'natural, nurturing figure'—leading to diverse groups such as Sankai Juku. Starting in the early 1980s, butoh experienced a renaissance as groups performed outside Japan, marked by full body paint, near nudity, shaved heads, and grotesque costumes. A tragic performance by Sankai Juku in Seattle, where a rope broke causing a performer's death, was broadcast on national news, broadening awareness in America. The art form continues to evolve, with groups forming worldwide under varied aesthetic ideals, and debates persist about who should receive credit for creating butoh, as Hijikata himself opposed codification, stating, 'Since I believe neither in a dance teaching method nor in controlling movement, I do not teach in this manner.'
Did You Know?
- The first butoh piece, Forbidden Colors, ended with a live chicken held between the legs of Yoshito Ohno, leading to audience outrage and Hijikata's ban from the festival.
- Hijikata changed the term from 'Ankoku-Buyou' to 'butoh', a long-discarded word originally meaning European ballroom dancing.
- During a Sankai Juku performance in Seattle, a rope broke, resulting in the death of a performer, which was broadcast on national news.
- In 2000, Sayoko Onishi established the International Butoh Academy in Palermo, Italy, later renamed the New Butoh School in 2007.
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