Words by Lauren Lim
Photos by Bogusław Chyła

At some point I let go of the part of me that wants to snicker. You are a tree swaying in the wind. Feel the earth beneath you. You are a stone. The water flows around you. The smooth jazz remix of Amon Tobin softly drums. I place each foot, feeling every point of contact between my soles and the floorboards.

You are a child. Remember what the world looks like at two feet tall.

Each step takes one minute to complete.

I open my eyes. Dancers are clawing against the walls, others crawling on the floor. I snap my eyes shut. It’s unfair of me to witness something so personal.

When I ask Tomasz Bazan—Tomek for short—how he defines butoh, he replies, “For me, butoh is an attitude, not only a form of dance or body movement. It’s like finding your way out of a dark tunnel. It’s standing face to face with your fears, or with your own evil, which, if not destroyed, can destroy you.” It doesn’t occur to me until later that my grasp of his explanation is not much clearer than my understanding of the dance.

Butoh is abbreviated from Ankoku Butoh, “the Dance of Darkness.” It developed in Japan in the late 1950s, when the Japanese were adjusting to the chaos after war and the pull towards Westernization. Butoh rejects socially acceptable expressions of art and beauty. Words that might describe it include: grotesque, spiritual, enigmatic, erotic, and emotional. And sometimes, boring.

The first time I saw Tomek dance, I endured a half hour performance that felt three times longer. Yet I’m just curious enough to attend his three-day workshop. The workshop is laid back, divided between training and film. None of the sessions are mandatory, and in fact, because nobody (save myself) is keen on the running portion of training, he scraps it. We’re not taking ourselves too seriously here, just trying something new.

As we watch film after film, my attention span doesn’t noticeably increase, but I do begin to appreciate the dance. Movement in butoh is often erratic and painfully slow. The disjointed motions, gnarled hands, and careful baby steps are eerie, as are the painted white bodies and distorted faces. Sometimes the tongue hangs out, shockingly red against the white of the face. Although I still can’t find meaning in the dance, it dawns on me that each movement is precise and intentional.

This makes sense in the context of the training. Tomek insists that we try everything, that we’d be surprised at what our bodies are capable of. He leads us in stretches, cardiovascular warm-ups, massages, breathing exercises, Tai Chi, and Kung Fu, encouraging greater awareness of the body and cultivation of its strength. Read More...