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"Liminal entities are neither here nor there; they are betwixt and between the positions assigned and arrayed by law, custom, convention, and ceremonial" (Turner 1969, 94).
Hijikata, the man responsible for creating Butoh, also upheld Artaudian views on life and humanity. Keeping in view the traditional Japanese thinking of a connection between nature and man, Hijikata incorporated it in butoh movements. However he focused more on nature's darker side believing that, "the dirty is beautiful and the beautiful is dirty, and [life] cycles between them forever" (Kurihara 1997, 38). Hijikata, just like Artaud, forced the viewers to pay closer attention to the side of life that they had usually ignored. He believed that it is due to a break between man and the darker side of life that we suffered anxieties and lived in fear.
The reason that we suffer from anxiety is that we are unable to live with our fears. Anxiety is something created by adults. The dancer, through the butoh spirit, confronts the origins of his fears: a dance which crawls towards the bowel of the earth [...] There is no way that one can understand the nature of light if one never observes deeply the darkness. A proper understanding of both requires that both their inherent natures be understood (quoted in Viala and Masson-Sekine, 188).
Butoh has come a long way since its inception in 1960s. It is now widely accepted as an art form. However it has not been able to impress the western audiences in the same manner primarily due to the cultural gap that has exposed butoh to misinterpretation. In the west, it is not accepted as an expression of passion and to the uninitiated, butoh is nothing but violent form of self-expression. While butoh has gained some prominence in dance circles of Europe, still it has not been able to fully transcend the clutches of its Japanese origin which results in misinterpretation. Marie-Gabrielle Rotie (1996) explains:
In the west, [butoh] has been open to misinterpretation, partly because of its marginalized presence and the rarity of its performances, partly because of the formalization of its original aspirations. The creative development of butoh by European practitioners depends on an awareness of the impulses from which it was born (Rotie, 34).
This Japanese...
It is important to study the various movements and political events that shaped people's psyche in 1960s. Expressionism, deconstruction, and anti-conformism are just some of the concepts that must be studied to fully grasp the impulse from which butoh originated.
References
Artaud, a. "To Have Done with the Judgment of God, a radio play (1947)." In (S. Sontag, ed.) Antonin Artaud: selected writings. Berkeley etc.: University of California Press, 1988: 570-1.
Artaud, a. (1964) Le Theater et son Double. Paris: Gallimard.
Artaud, a. (1996) Oeuvres Completes XII 218. Quoted in Virmaux, a. & O., Antonin Artaud, Qui tes-vous? Lyon: La Manufacture.
Artaud, a. (1996) Oeuvres Completes XV 341. Quoted in Virmaux, a. & O., Antonin Artaud, Qui tes-vous? Lyon: La Manufacture.
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