Hijikata Tatsumi Archive

On Thursday, my first full day in Tokyo, my mind was filled with the name Hijikata Tatsumi. Today, I went to the Hijkata archives at Keio University. I met with the archivist, who allowed me to watch his films and read books from his library for four hours.

My previous knowledge of him had been supplied only by provocative pictures and brief biographies. I knew that the first Butoh piece was Kinjiki, translated as Forbidden Colors, performed with Yoshito Ohno in 1959. This piece was inspired by Yukio Mishima's novel of the same name. The piece features a homosexual relationship between the two men. It was erotic and violent and met mixed reviews - some were shocked, others were thrilled.

His other well-known piece is the 1968 Hijikata and the Japanese: Rebellion of the Body. This piece made Hijikata and ankoku butoh known, and we know it today by the picture of Hijikata's half-starved body wearing nothing but a golden phallus. He rehearsed religiously and fasted weeks before the show, eating nothing but milk and weak miso soup. This performance seemed to embody two rebellions: of the nation and of the body. Groups in Japan were in rebellion in the sixties; Coincidentally, ten days after Hijikata's performance, a crowd of more than ten thousand of students rioted in front of Shinjuku station with the motto from Mao Tse Dong: "Every rebellion has a reason," (information from Nanako Kurihara's amazing thesis on Hijikata. I will befriend her!). It's also the piece where Hijikata refers to his adolescence in the countryside of Tohoku, due to his idea that the physicality of the Japanese are determined by regional characteristics. His rebellion was a rejection of other forms of dance that did not suit him. The superb Kurihara states "Rejecting the existing dance styles of the West and those of native Japan, and equally uninterested in pedestrian movement, Hijikata attempted to create a dance of ritualistic quality that would transform the human body and mind," (2).

Hijikata moved to Tokyo when he was young, for the sake of his dance training. He studied German expressionist dance (influenced by Eguchi Takaya and thus Mary Wigman) in Tohoku and branched into ballet and jazz in Tokyo. Despite his passion, Hijikata was never good at these forms of dancing. They didn't fit him, his stiff body or lower center of gravity, and not even why he wanted to dance. " He said repeatedly that he desired to create a dance in which life was dance, and in which he could create his own universe.... a style that emphasized the presence of the dancers rather than communicating meaning of demonstrating virtuosity," (Kurihara 24).

He was born in the countryside and moved to the city. There, he always felt like an outsider because of his upbringing. He belonged to a small social circle of avante-garde artists and radical thinkers. He desired to dance, but this drive was not fulfilled by conventional forms of dance. Because of our similar backgrounds, I empathized with him and desired to see his progression throughout life and art. Yes, I do not want a dance that is only about "demonstrating virtuousity." I was questioning whether dance was about "communicating meaning." I have never thought about dance as "emphasizing the presence of the dancers." The sheer presence! Just the power to fill the room and to move people. I have said before that dance is experience. Hijikata did, too. "According to him, one must experience dance directly, rather than merely watch it from a distance and try to interpret it. The spectator must transform himself through the experience, like a ritual," (46).

His ideas about dance are clear and riddle-like all at the same time, pulling me in more as my desire to understand Hijikata's universe grows. His life and theories are intriguing, since he pulled so much of his perspective from German and French writers and visual artists before his time and then fed the Japanese avante-gard art world of the sixties. I love the relationship between the arts, the spinning of ideas, and the creating of a new cosmos. A flyer for Dance Experience 3 (1960) had this written on the back:

"I received secret information which Mr. Tatsumi Hijikata is said to perform a heresy ceremony again. I am peasant to see it and must be ready for black masks and suspicious perfumes for the night.

The classics and the advance guard here come to a crisis. I can find modern symbolic language in his work.

- Ukio Mishima" (page 25 of Tatsumi Hijikata's Butoh)

Joanna Newsom

Joanna Newsom performed in Urbanguild, a small club in downtown Kyoto, on Monday, February 19th with Bill Callahan and mamma!milk. That afternoon, I went to a butoh class taught by Ima Tenko (more on THAT later!), and went to see Joanna with two friends from class, Cara and Adam.

The club was so small that the fliers for upcoming shows and the merchandise tables were set-up in the hallway of the building. The audience and stage occupied a space about the size of two large living rooms put together. After we paid at the entrance, Cara was bold and clear, weaving through the crowd (about 3/4 Japanese, 1/4 foreigners) to find us ground seats a breath away from the stage, returning into the crowd to pull the timid Adam to his seat at the feet of the performers. Bill Callahan was pungent, sad-eyed and soothing. I like his songs, acoustic guitar, strong voice, and the constant tap of his shoe.

Joanna emerged and sat center stage behind her harp. To the right, a calm man playing a small guitar resembling a mandolin. To the left, a red-eyed man set up behind bass drums, barefoot.

She began with "Emily." The song is so breathtakingly beautiful,and it compounds with the vibrant hands on harp strings, her facial reactions to the words she sings, her voice, lower and more sonorous than in her recordings. Her face looks justlike my old friend Anna, and I traveled back in time while I listened with allof my being.The feelings of hearing a slow steady voice read me poetry, walking in the park and talking about love andlost promises, smoking clove cigarettes in the car and listening to Ani Difranco and Radiohead, her bright bright eyes and these feelings branched out to others, holding Melissa's hand as she cried at a performance of "this woman's work," Jae holding my hand in the art garage while I cried. I did not recollect the times consciously, but insteadl felt all of these rare moments that were real and didn't words, but were like growing up, caring for each other like siblings and instructing each other the difference between meteors and meteorites, gathering before our storytellers. As Joanna's song progressed, it built to heights I couldn't have imagined, Joanna unrelenting. the drumbeat louad and alive. I was crying uncontrollably, lips quivering, shaking. Oh sweet sweet sweet sweet Lord.

The song ended and I had a chance to pull myself together. While she spoke, I took a few pictures, mostly to remember alter how close I was. I did not dare use flash, so they are mostly Joanna blurs. (And remember - no zoom is used either!)

The show remained captivating until the end, even when they had left the stage and the vibrations still existed in the room. Her album Y's was presented in a scope and scale impossible in recordings. It is a good example of the full vibrancy live performances can achieve in comparison to recordings. They played a few of her milk-eyed mender songs, like "peach, plum, pear" and "the book of right-on," which were re-arranged for the trio present onstage. It sounded wonderful. I was enraptured. I cannot think of a time that I had felt like what I described above. Felt a longing and a joy for how life has fit together. And felt such awe. It made me hate modern dance.

Before the show started, I was talking with Adam, a dancer who has never been formally trained in ballet or modern dance. He has taken a few classes in a college in Ohio, but most of his work is him, moving. As he described some of the pieces to me, they sounded so clear and purposeful, and I could imagine his body achieving great communication and wonder. What he is doing wouldn'y be called modern dance. Would it be called contemporary dance? There is no school of technique or choreographic method behind it. Just one person talking with his body. I thought of the dancing that I have done and wondered if I have ever really danced. I wanted to divorce modern dance. I wanted to throw it away, complete with the person it made me, how it made me feel. I felt like I had been doing it all to communicate to myself when I was a smart and content child, dancing in the living room daily for joy. Modern dance takes me further away- just as the adolescent is socialized and therefore pulled further away from childhood, the modern dance body is trained in patterns, socialized in a technique in an effort to de-socialize the body. It sounds garbled. It all sounds garbled in my head, too. How did it happen? Perhaps I felt life in a way listening to Joanna that dance has only served to distort. It still sounds garbled.

Since Joanna did not have a set list that night, she would ask her two bandmates what they wanted to play after each song. When she asked the small guitar-playing man in front of me, I would whisper "what about Sadie?" and they would hear me but then play a song that was not "Sadie." It was in no way disappointing, though, since every song chosen was a joy, of course.

For the last song, she sang a duet with the percussionist. This man, with normally severe, slightly-red eyes, completely changed as he sang. His countenance was soft, his eyes peacefully closed. His voice was like aloe or honey or something equally soothing. Then they exited. Eventually, Joanna returned alone for an encore. I think she smiled at me the second before she sat down. And then she played "Sadie." Each intonation and stress was different, and the song hurried. It seemed an exploration of the song by a weary traveler, sincere, yet searching and tweaking sounds and looking for completion.

"Here We Are" at Kobe Jogakuin

Kobe Jogakuin dance majors performed their end-of-year concert, entitled "Here We Are," on the nights of February 14 through February 18th. This is the programs first year, and the concert showcases the talents of its 15 dance majors. Well, 16 - somehow I got onto the bill as well. I began learning material with them in September and followed the rigorous daily schedule of rehearsals before the show. The experience was fun and soul-shattering.

As this is a personal post, I am going to write quickly and with many mistakes. Get ready.

First on the program was a Graham technique piece, in which we demonstrated different Graham exercises. We started on the floor with contractions, long leans, turns around the back, knee work, and etc. We stood, did some plies and tendus, kicks, prances, triplets, leaps, standing contractions, majestic walking, and etc. It lasted about 25 minutes, and it felt good. It is always nice to relax into the contraction and release-activated movement of Graham. Although it is not at all "relaxing" - especially standing in very rigid ballet poses.

A problem with the Graham piece was that the dancers were not looking out. Instead, they were so focused inwards that they had a glazed look on their faces for the majority of the time. What is the importance of "looking out"? The way that I understand it can be explained by this metaphor: Think of how you feel when someone talks to you and make eye contact, as opposed to when they talk to you while staring off into space. Isn't the latter kind of weird? And when the eyes are actually looking outward, instead of inward, the person looks more aware, and thus more alive, and more sensitive to her surroundings. This is my personal explanation for why it is important to "look out." Simply - it is to avoid looking like a zombie.

The musical accompaniment was exciting; Sarah Shugarman traveled from Canada to compose and perform live music for the piece, with our drummer Kyoshi. Sarah plays violin, piano, and percussion, while singing and laughing. Currently, she teaches strings at the University of Toronto High School. She is shown at the right, with Toru Shimazaki. The second half of the concert was a collage of pieces choreographed and taught by Shimazaki.

On the whole, it felt like an entertainment medley. There was a dramatic piece, followed by an emotional piece, seguewaying into a burlesque-y jazzy piece, calmed down by a long lyrical piece, followed by a short improv game, then a clap-along energetic piece, changing to a softer-feeling chair piece, and then the grand finale of a stomping-zombie-body-yanking piece. The bow reprised the emotional piece from the beginning, wherein we hold hands, and I hug a girl for about3 counts of 8. About 30 minutes of dancing.

As I danced, I wanted to figure out what I was dancing- so much of it seemed contradictory. There was no overall story or theme to tie it all together, nothing we were trying to "say." It seemed to dash from one extreme of happiness to another extreme of concern. Yet, the audience would be riled. One of the women from the international center was crying at the end, stating that she could "feel my emotions." Can you emote strictly from catchy music and interesting movement? I suppose so. But something felt off. I would look at the people around me and see that they were wearing their "dance face." It has a blank stare that looks off somewhere into the distance, yet the face cooperates to say what it should be saying. For a dramatic piece, the eyebrows form a upside-down V. In a gesture to console another, the head tilts sympathetically. Yet the face looks like some kind of deer judging if there is food in the bushes.

There is one part of the emotional piece where another girl and I stand face to face, from opposite sides of the room, and slowly walk to each other to meet in the center. As we walked, her eyes seemed to be looking straight into my eyes, with an expression of concern on her face. But, at the same time, she was not looking into my eyes. It was like looking at a mannequin. Complete vacancy.

Yet, these girls have been practicing so hard, and one can tell the large amount of work and intention put into every single movement they perform. Their bodies and faces were so committed, but it was a commitment to performing a task. It was a commitment to these counts and this line and the corrections sensei gave us. It felt like there was no art in it. Nothing was being said, other than "'Here We Are,' look at us."

I obviously struggled with this, as I do not aspire too much for technique, yet desparately want to say something. However, the audience was touched. The piece pulled the audience's emotions for a ride, exciting them and provoking them. During the calm, lyrical piece, all of the dancers sit, facing the audience, as the dancers take turns leaving their seat, joining the dance, and then returning to their seat. I was sitting for quite some time, facing the audience. Usually, their faces were completely relaxed. Some heads were tilted, and the eyes moved from between the dancers as they came out. Sometimes a smile would break out, or one audience member would make a comment to another, but that was rare. Usually it was just a zoned-out and relaxed face, unaware that I was watching.

I have yet to understand it all. At the end, almost all of the performers were crying. They were happy tears of a job completed. I'm still not sure of all of this. Partly, it feels like a beauty contest where the winners cry at the end. On the other hand, I respect everyone very much and know that there is a depth beyond the superficial.

What was i saying onstage? The first night, before I knew that the dancing would effect the audience, I felt like I was in a marathon of being energetic, on time, and thinking thin thoughts. After the show, Shimazaki said, "See, Caitlin? It is not about the technique. If you go out there, and be a person, you will touch people." I don't understand what we were doing. But, I had fun, and the audience enoyed it, and it made 15 dance majors burst into tears of joy.

It ended last night, and my thoughts will hopefully develop with time. But for now, IT'S OVER!