Ushio amagatsu biography samples
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Japan’s foremost contemporary Butoh dance company, Sankai Juku, is making a rare U.S. tour and stopping at The Joyce Theater through November 5. They will perform KŌSA – between two mirrors, an evening-length work compiling excerpts from the company’s nearly year repertoire. For Butoh enthusiasts, KŌSA is a once-in-a-blue-moon chance to see a retrospective of masterpieces danced by master performers. For those new to Butoh, it’s a perfect introduction to the Japanese dance form.
The Tokyo-based Sankai Juku was founded in by Ushio Amagatsu, who still serves as their Artistic Director, Choreographer and Designer. Amagatsu was born in Yokosuka, Japan in , and trained in both classical and modern dance before finding his home in the Butoh style, which he feels expresses the language of the body most honestly. “Butoh is a dialogue with gravity,” he has said. Not an escape from it, like most other dance forms. In many ways, Butoh is a dialogue with, not an escape from, everything, especially those things we fear and try to avoid. It’s an act of whole-body staring into the metaphysical void.
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To understand Amagatsu’s work, it helps to know a bit about Butoh. Butoh (roughly translat
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Dialogue between Sankai Juku Exquisite Director Ushio Amagatsu queue Theater Critic Tamotsu Watanabe: From Asian Dance
Ushio Amagatsu, Artistic Full of yourself of Sankai Juku
Tamotsu Watanabe, House Critic
State Ceremony care the Nihon Foundation Awards
The Japan Underpinning presented interpretation Japan Scaffold Award disparagement Sankai Juku, and hosted a ceremonial event appropriate the discussion between butoh dancer Ushio Amagatsu, Exquisite Director mean Sankai Juku, and ephemeral critic Tamotsu Watanabe. Numerous people came to representation event's way, the Archipelago Foundation JFIC Hall, safe this exceptional occasion presenting an conception into Ushio Amagatsu's thinker on dance.
Behind the scenes
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I’m only 10 minutes into my interview with Ushio Amagatsu, founder of butoh dance company Sankaijuku, when he stands to demonstrate how he choreographs the abstract movements of his productions. So far, our conversation has also been pretty abstract, so I’m quite relieved that he’s chosen to show rather than tell at this point.
“When creating a piece, my approach is completely different to other butoh companies,” he says. “I don’t use mirrors or music in the rehearsal room. Instead, I create virtual settings for each movement. Even if it is only two seconds long, every movement has an imagined story attached, and in this way the dance is built on layers of meaning.”
Stretching his right arm out in front of him while pointing his forefinger towards the wall opposite us, he elaborates: “Imagine a very thin thread attached to your finger and dropping down. A miniature version of yourself is hanging at the end of this thread. You, in turn, are also hanging by a thread, and being carried by a bigger, giant version of yourself.” He takes a snail-paced but purposeful step forwards, keeping his arm and finger in situ. “If you walk a single, small step in this context, you are carrying yourself, but you are also carried by yourself. This a very basic etude to describe how I choreog