An extremely bent, curving back: this is all about Murobushi’s Butoh. There is nothing redundant. Once, as a member of Dairakuda-kan, Murobushi danced as a mummy reviving from a burning coffin as if erupting in the flame. The archetype of his back can be found in this mummy. After that, for a quarter century, while holding the spark, he has never settled down; instead, he tours world cities and performs Butoh. Having engraved his style of wandering on his back, he named it “Haika [Back Fire].” He integrated his existence into his back; the question is whether it forms an expression or not.

How can we be aware of and grasp a body that ceaselessly changes, disintegrates, and heads towards destruction at every moment? If there is no clue for settling down, the body must be open to the things that change without stopping and move on. Isn’t the body produced in the middle of the process of transformation?

Murobushi showed up alone, wearing a black suit directly on his skin. After a little hesitation, it suddenly began. A body painted with silver powder appeared when he took off the suit. He had white sinew and well-trained muscles but was by no means macho. He bent forward a little and took on a pose of looking around. It was fierce and flexible enough to remind us of a feline beast. Then, without notice, his entire body concentrated towards the inside, and he got ready to condense. As if succumbing to the gravitation of his fierce interior forces and minute order, he gradually heated and became refined, beginning to exist as a life with brightness that has never been seen before.

This bent back evokes various images of spectators. It transformed into a grotesque form, like that of an inscrutable emblem depicted by crustaceans or alien eggs. People talk about the back in wonder. With his back, Murobushi realized the geometry that Nijinsky once formed in Afternoon of a Faun.

Murobushi’s body, however, was not satisfied with remaining as an image producing sack. He easily stopped and wandered the stage as if starting over from the beginning. He leaned over the end of the stage, stiffen the body with reaction and fell backwards. It was the dangerous art of throwing oneself that suddenly severed the situation. The back of his head was bleeding a little, having been injured by his repeated head-butts against the red iron door deep in the back of the stage of the previous scene. Not to be bound by a particular image, the power gradually became tense towards his inside.

And that murmur. He did not resonantly speak poetic words; he spoke in such an ordinary and direct manner that drew out a wry smile. He somehow had the atmosphere of a dubious, experienced show man. In the middle of the process of his own body’s rapid purification, Murobushi himself talked to us with a remarkably calm face. His violence was not a trance. Then, in the next moment, his whole body suddenly began to stiffen for the upcoming upright fall. By banishing his body to the most distant place from images, Murobushi enabled his body to accept and reject any sort of interpretation, and the object defenselessly offered between the two spheres, was his back.

This time, Edge 01 had two parts. The first half of the second day was of work-in-progress performance with three Mexican dancers: Valentina Castro (65-years-old), and Raul Parrao and Rodrigo Angoitia in their thirties. These male dancers co-stared with Murobushi (choreographer, composer, and director). Three men in black suits approached Valentina who appeared in girly costume. The work is still in the stage of plot, yet it will be a stimulating collaboration once the motivation of the work is shared with all dancers.

Choreographer, composer, and director / Ko Murobushi

Dancers / Ko Murobushi, Valentina Castro, Raul Parrao, Rodrigo Angoitia

October 25 / Tokyo, Theater Tram