Unetsu, des œufs debout par curiosité

At the edge of a rectangular stretch of water, four Butoh dancers with alabaster bodies wrapped in silk execute a motionless and precious sabbat. Magicians from another world, they worship large suspended eggs that mirror the smooth and oblong shapes of their skulls. A long visual poem on the notion of origin, while trickles of water and sand fall from the fly system.

Butoh (dance of shadow) is a movement formed by Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata at the start of the 1960s in reaction to the secular forms of Japanese dance. In a “post-nuclear” aesthetic, nurtured by European literature (Bataille, Michaux, Artaud), it produced provocative and tortured shows in which the dancers’ bodies, as though twisted by traumatised collective memory, stigmatise the cataclysm. Several groups emerged, and Butoh received international acclaim, while in Japan it continued to be a relatively unpopular discipline. The Sankaï Juku group, founded in 1976, is part of a more aesthetic branch of this movement, associating cutting-edge scenographic techniques with the mystical themes of the ancient East.

Surce : Patrick Bossatti