Moving sculpture

The Japanese butoh artist walks on stage casually as any dancer would during a rehearsal. But this man commands reverence. He is clad in a long-sleeved shirt and dark brown pants. He walks deliberately with his head down, in deep thought, as if wondering what to do next. At once, as if an idea has formed in his mind, he embarks on a strange appearance. He evokes the image of a larva desperately wanting out of his cocoon. The austere light traps this strange unborn butterfly against the wall. His hands look hideous, his head pathetic, his right foot sickled. Time drifts. The audience holds its breath. Thus begins the mighty performance of Ko Murobushi.

Is it theater? Dance? Many say, neither. A few say, both. Butoh is feeling. It is an enigma that strips itself layer by layer down to its awkward naked form. At no other time can distortion be poetic and beauty repulsive. Ko wrings out pain every human being might hide and when one sees his own pain performed: It can be revoltingly beautiful.

In a one-hour spectacle called Edge/Manila, Ko becomes a life form, a creature, a thought. He exorcises the man within and, not illustrating but converting, becomes whatever the mind chooses to think. There is an exchange of feelings, memories and theories between Ko and his audience. A Japanese experience becomes a Filipino experience.

Unlike a conventional dancer who expresses a concept, a butoh artist becomes the concept. I would not encourage young artists to perform butoh without a deep understanding of its essence. Every twitch, warp and deformation is a truth and anything outside of that truth is a farce. Butoh was first seen in 1959 in a Tokyo performance by Tatsumi Hijikata and Yoshino Ono. In a short piece done without music, a depiction of a young boy was shown to have sex with a chicken. He appeared to strangle it to death with his thighs. Their performance was perceived as scandalous by a shocked Japanese society.

After training in Western dance and in the German Neue Tanze tradition, butoh’s founders sought a new form of movement that suited their bodies, something that was Japanese but not conventionally Japanese. While drawing from nature and their imagination they came upon a new art form that delved into the taboos of forbidden passion. Butoh revolutionaized dance/theater and spread throughout the world. Today it continues to evolve in ways the founders themselves never anticipated. Ko Murobishi, who trained under Hijikata, is recognized in his hometown as Hijikata’s direct successor.

Butoh stipulates that the only thing the soul must express is its own purity. Ko transforms so purely that he compels the audience to transform with him. He is a fetus. He is a panther. He is an insect. He is contemplative agony. He is the peak of excitement. He is a corpse. He is life springing from the bowels of the earth. He is our Philippine political situation – I doubt if he wanted to be that in particular but the idea entered my mind furtively – and that is butoh. He hobbles on a linear beam of death. He slams his back on the floor. He is a contorted figure: Livid, pitiful, acidic, intriguing, nasty, yet dazzling.

He uses onomatopoeia to capture movement in sounds – incomprehensible noise trickling in, never calling attention to itself but becoming adverbs describing the verb. He removes his clothes. Sinewy strips of muscle taunt the audience. Michelangelo would have loved to chisel this 57-year-old Japanese Adonis on a fine piece of marble. (Fifty-seven is young. A Japanese butoh dancer is still dancing at the age of 93.)

He skulks then slinks towards the edge of the floor. He sinks his teeth on the jagged wood. He buries his face on a small heap of sand and deliberately consumes a few grains. His wizened face turns ashen. He points to a strewn flier on the floor and says, "That’s me!"

Yes he is! Ko Murobushi is butoh: A human experience.

There is always one question and answer I dread whenever I come out of a performance. What was the artist trying to say? The answer is almost always, nothing. When I came out of Ko’s performance I asked myself the same question: What did he tell me? My dance-weary mind replied: Nothing much. But my heart said: Everything! The montage of images that came from Ko’s body did not articulate one detailed statement. The movements were far removed from the so-called Western technique. But I did feel satisfaction. For the first time in my life I did not see a show. I felt it. And that is butoh.