Stopped breath Breath in between From breath to love I wear the brass board again as the costume

I put on desperate high heels

Fragile Withering waist Impotent heels

Stopped breath I wear the brass board again

A cave of the covered neck Of Acephale A stifling body of a thin membrane

From inside to outside Tremble from outer to inner Continue hitting

Skins deep inside peeling with the heels A star to became a bird’s star

In the first piece, Beautiful Blue Sky (JADE 2003, Hijikata Memorial), Murobushi vividly visualized a critical consciousness toward Hijikata, and this time too, like his previous work, the curtain violently rose in repetitive motions. The three young dancers then lifted an enormous brass board, turned it over, then jumped with the reaction of the movement. The only difference from his previous work was that the three were in high heels. It goes without saying that this brass board which Murobushi has been particular about for a year is a quotation from Tatsumi Hijikata. He used to say ﾒWhen a child licks money, the parents reprimands, saying that it is not something to be licked;ﾓ however, Butoh is born when one tries to be drastically faithful to this sort of childish desire, namely, the infantile desire towards ﾒmetamorphosis into metalﾓ (Collected Works I, p.24). On the other hand, there is always ﾒpowerﾓ as a theme in the center of Murobushiﾕs art. A squander of excessive energy that twisted muscles radiated from inside the body. But as soon as a brass board was introduced, the hardness of metal opposed and resisted the muscles, causing the ﾒpowerﾓ to automatically transform into ﾒviolence.ﾓ The men wearing only black shorts grasped and flung the enormous brass board on the floor and tossed it about in the air. On the contrary, they also pushed on their body caressingly against it and attempted impossible sexual intercourse. They desired overwhelming power, and all the better for it, because here the perverted pleasure of despising themselves in relation to it was seen. The dancers in high heels became swelling phalluses with castrated heels to receive all of their weight. In this way, Murobushi was not only soaked in desire for metal (=power), but also questioning its nature semantically and demolishing it. Desire for the power was torn in the middle of the contradiction and hung up in the air. However, if we understand that well-trained ﾒhistoricalﾓ body of Murobushi and that of todayﾕs youth colliding and producing an unknown ﾒexperimental bodyﾓ is the challenge succeeding previous work, the fact that such perverted aesthetics are born without failing should be the problem to discuss. The bodies of the youths looked so docile and defenseless that Murobushi seemed unable to establish a relation with them. As this series continues, I expect to see a true foreign object driven into Murobushiﾕs firm aesthetic, producing a crack.

(April 13, 2004 " Apr. 14, 2004, Kagurazaka die, remarked on April 13, 2004)