Ushio Amagatsu, éléments de doctrine

June 1993 : Ushio Amagatsu and his performers rehearse “Graine de cumquat”, the company’s masterpiece created in 1978, that recounts a little japanese boy’s initiation to the world.

In Japan, white is the color of mourning. The butoh dancers smear the white powder body and the poeticization of the space that characterizes the pieces of the company Sankai Juku is like an exquisite corpse, in the literal sense of the term. For Amagatsu, founder of the company, butoh dance is both life and death.

Source: Fabienne Arvers

The gesture in memory, towards the other side.
There is a kind of fish which, in the earliest phase of its life, is  born male. Later, its male organs degenerate and it metamorphoses into a  female. This is why male and female were originally one and the same.  It is said that this male and this female copulated and gave birth to an  egg. It’s an odd story! So, over the course of its life, the fish  experiences what it is to be male and female in succession. The origins  of mankind are to be found in this fish. Long ago, fish emerged onto the  land and began to live there. We know that a show has a beginning and  an end. When we trace a circle with compasses, there is a starting point  and a finishing point. When the circle is complete, these two points  merge and a shape appears.
“Kinkan shonen (Graine de cumquat) [(Kumquat Seed)]” evokes a young  boy’s dream about the origins of life and death. The child standing on  the beach allows his sight to dive beneath the surface of the ocean and  fuse with the fish, the primitive stage of humanity. The dried fish  which dress the set serve as a vital casing for the shaven-headed and  fully-powdered dancers, as they slip out of their coating in a  violently-disturbing transformation.