Today, is Butoh a single ideal which narrowly survives as the object of timid irony?

Such a weak-kneed attitude was perfectly smashed. Even if it can be no longer called “Butoh,” Ko Murobushi’s dance was incredible. In any case, important scenes came out successively. It was in the sense that Murobushi’s body and the spectators’ perceptions encountered various grave situations one after another, following time. It assumed a sort of event-like nature and was truly a “witness.” Worn-out ideals never really die; they instead wait for a good opportunity to revive.

In the beginning, he fell down like a pillar, and landed on the back of his head! It grabbed the guests’ attention well. His stance to split the artistic frame by art was consistent throughout. He then stood with extremely restrained movement. As if another life filled with energy was squirming in the sack, namely the skin; one part stiffened with power, another part apparently relaxed, and the two extremes were positioned in the totally eccentric way. I couldn’t help being stupefied. Murobushi was, with his own body (no, it was surely with something I do not know), obviously fighting.

Moreover, inconceivably, he spoke! In order to call it a soliloquy, the distance from the spectators was not very far; however, these whining-like words were sometimes closed to themselves and inaudible. Then what in the world was the weight of this voice? Indeed, uttering can be a part of dance if it has the full commitment of the dancer’s body. Nonetheless, this lonely, desperate fight, created a connection with the spectators while revealing the elusiveness of the action of dance and the bottomless depth that the body has. It was something like an autonomous turbulent whirl which nobody cound touch. A single war. The views of the spectators were helplessly involved. True bodies does not merely refuse verbalization; they defeat and foil it.