Anthology Film Archive Butoh Program

The legendary Anthology Film Archives is an international center for the preservation, study, and exhibition of film and video, with a particular focus on American independent and avant-garde cinema and its precursors found in classic European, Soviet and Japanese film. The Butoh Film Series featured short and full-length documentaries on butoh founders Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, as well as Japanese avant-garde work of the post-war period,  2 short surrealistic films, which exemplify various aesthetic and conceptual connections between some early butoh explorations.. This was a chance for New York audiences to view seminal work rarely screened outside of Japan.

The films featured:

2:00:00 PM
Summer Storm (2003) by Misao Arai
Summer Storm is a documentary film including performances, background on Hijikata, and an exploration of the northern country that was an essential element in Hiiikata’s work. Included is a significant 1973 Kyoto performance, which is also the last of Hijikata’s dances to be filmed.

3:30:00 PM
Beauty and Strength (2001) Assembled by NHK Software
Beauty and Strengthincludes performances, interviews, documentation of workshops and rehearsals,drawings, writings,and biographical information. The film is comprehensive look into the world of Ohno’s dance. Performances include 1977 and 1994 versions of La Argentina.

5:30:00 PM
Un Chien Andalou (1929) by Luis Bunueland Salvador Dali
Un Chien Andalou is a ground-breakingand continually influential surrealist collaboration. The dream-logic of the film (the departure from the external senses defiantly marked by the notorious slicing of the eyeball!)is consistent with the internal logic of butoh. Early butoh dances often made explicit references to surrealist works.

5:30:00 PM
The Seashell and The Clergyman (1928) by Germain Dulac
The Seashell and The Clergyman i sa predecessor of Un Chien Andalou, directed by the radical feminist (in her day) Dulac. A provocative early surrealist work based on a script by Antonin Artaud. Hirikata was a great fan of Artaud’s revolutionary theater (one of his prized possessions is said to have been a copy of Artaud’s radio program To Have Done With The Judgement Of God) and his dances often bore strong resemblances to Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty.

The 3rd biennial New York Butoh Festival celebrated the origins, and international evolution of butoh in a series of performances, workshops, films and lectures. Butoh is a contemporary dance form that emerged in Japan. Fusing the traditional with the avant-garde, complex choreography with improvisation, wild physicality with meditative stillness, butoh defies easy definition and embraces paradox. After almost half a century since Hijikata’s Ankoku Butch Project, butoh dancers have been appearing like mushrooms across the world taking myriad forms and paths; some retain the butoh label as a marketing strategy, or to declare affiliation with original butoh artists. Others continue the teachings of their masters, make crucial discoveries, and perhaps later become susceptible to stagnation in these once-vital realization till others have gained great inspiration from their studies, evolved their learning and art process to create their own butoh. This Festival celebrates the life-work of dancers whose bodies demonstrate the pursuit of honesty, going beyond found styles or forms. Butoh is born and dies with every dancer; that is its fundamental power.

NYBF 2007 showcased over 60 emerging and established local and international artists. Because are currently the only festival in the United States presenting butoh’s international spectrum, and was a rare chance to see a number of these legendary dancers perform, many for the first time in New York. In this year’s Festival we were pleased to open our programming to US-based dancers at Japan Society and CAVE.

This festival was presented at CAVE Organization, a nonprofit artist collective, founded in 1996. CAVE’s produced more than 300 visual art exhibitions, multi-media installations, workshops and performances throughout the last eleven years. The New York Butch Festival is a natural outgrowth of CAVE’s ongoing commitment to presenting international art and to promoting interdisciplinary and multicultural exchange.