Tracing Antonin Artaud’s Ideas in the Formation of Butoh Dance

 
 
Butoh dance does not easily fit into a specific framework and structure, but when facing Butoh, more than anything, we are dealing with an experimental show that constantly tries to transgress its previous boundaries and offer a new definition of itself in every performance. Therefore, it can be said that Butoh shatters all pre-determined conventions and redefines the boundaries of dance and performance. One of the distinctive features of Butoh is the function of the body in it. Unlike certain forms of dance particularly ballet in which the movements are delicate and graceful, in Butoh the movements of dancers are not graceful, but the distorted bodies and bent legs and knees deliberately display a rather grotesque image in line with the motifs behind the creation of this form of performance. Besides, in Butoh, improvisation takes precedence over meticulously choreographed movements insofar as the improvised movements are in line with the theme of the performance. Founded by Tatsumi Hijikata and developed by other post-war avant-garde Japanese artists, Butoh has been influenced by numerous artistic movements throughout the world including surrealism, dadaism, German expressionism, and others. However, it can be said that one of the most significant influences in the formation of this form of performance has been Antonin Artaud. Artaud, known as a visionary artist, has left a rich legacy that influences almost all avant-garde artistic movements in theater and performance the world over. Frustrated by the theater of his time, he called for a theater that was free from the dominance of text and literature. He believed that text was only one element of performance and should not dominate the whole performance. His configuration of what he had in mind is to be found in his “theater of cruelty”. Artaud did not approve of the relationship between performers and the audience in the theater of his time since in his opinion the audience was the passive receiver of what was offered to him and did not engage in the performance. Instead, he called for a performance where the audience was immersed in what was going on. Certainly, this could not be achieved by using words to affect the intellectual faculty of the audience, and what he was trying to achieve was influencing the senses and the nervous system of the audience. Through mise-en-scene, sound, light design, gestures, and the body of performers he was determined to engage the audience totally in the performance and ensure that he would leave the theater transformed by the experience. This could be realized by reconsidering all the elements of performance. Pre-existing play texts that relied on literature did not seem appropriate anymore. Texts were not supposed to be eliminated, but they were expected to carry the same weight as the other elements of performance. Themes were also of the utmost importance in Artaud’s theater of cruelty since he was not interested in social issues people were struggling with. He adopted universal themes that were timeless and placeless such as creation, chaos, love, death, and so on. Such themes made the performances magnificent and appealed to all human beings. Perhaps observing a piece of Balinese performance was a turning point in Artaud’s life and he was fascinated by the use of gestures and facial expressions by performers. This was completely in line with his belief that words could not express the unconscious and subconscious intentions of the artist. He had always been preoccupied with the inefficiency of language and words in expressing the inner feelings and emotions of the artist. His “First Manifesto for a Theater of Cruelty”, which later appeared in “The Theater and Its Double” includes all his ideas for the realization of this type of theater. However fascinating his ideas depicted in this manifesto might seem, in practice he could never fulfill what he had proposed in theory, which gave rise to rather heavy criticism for years and critics accused him of merely theorizing certain interesting ideas which could never really be materialized. Particularly, The Cenci, which can be regarded as the most noticeable piece he wrote was met with harsh criticism. However, over the next decades, artists all over the world began to realize the importance of his ideas and up until today, it can be said that almost every avant-garde movement in performing arts has to some extent been influenced by the work of this French visionary artist. Peter Brook, Jerzy Grotowski, Samuel Beckett, Jean Genet, and more recently post-dramatic artists such as Sarah Kane are among the artists influenced by him. Artaud has always been intrigued by the body and the body plays a central role in his theater of cruelty. However, in 1947 near the end of his artistic career as well as his life, he introduced the concept of the Body Without Organs (BWO) for the first time in a radio play he wrote entitled “To Have Done With the Judgment of God”. This was later adopted by philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari as a key concept in their account of the genesis of the schizophrenic subject.
On the other hand, Butoh dance is an avant-garde postwar performance in which the traces of the Artaud’s ideas can be found. The present research aims to explore the influence of the works and ideas of Antonin Artaud on the formation and development of Butoh dance. The ideas of Artaud had been introduced to Japan and they had contributed to artistic works of the 1960s. In 1965, his seminal book The Theater and its Double was translated into Japanese and consequently, postwar avant-garde Japanese artists in general were inspired by the innovative ideas articulated in his book. Particularly the invasion of American culture in the postwar period had motivated Japanese artists to try to explore authentic forms of performance that might go beyond a mere style and attempt to promote a certain culture, in the case of Butoh a new dance culture. Therefore, in this study, an effort is made to analyze the effects of Artaud's ideas on the formation and evolution of Butoh dance. This qualitative descriptive-analytical research is conducted by utilizing library sources and reliable websites. Besides, numerous Butoh performances have been observed and analyzed to detect the trace of the ideas put forward by Artaud. The results show that in Butoh's performances, all possible tools are employed to invite personal perception, sorrow, and suffering. Music and dance follow each other in parallel and complement each other. People active in Butoh as artists have established a harmonious connection between music and movement. The same thing fascinated Artaud in the East. Although in Butoh's works, the range of movement is not wide, the opposition and dynamics of the lines, body conflicts, and tensions resulting from the lines are visible. In Butoh dance, specific movement motifs are used symbolically. Butoh dancer’s aesthetic choice is not based on realism because it describes a ritual mourning, rituals that were connected with our ancestors, rituals that guide this rebellious spirit and made him lose his mind. Even repeated movements of the head to the side can be evidence of a state of unconsciousness and falling into a trance. The dancer repeats these motifs by maintaining the same body design and the angles he creates in the body, by changing the dynamics through limited, stable, and sudden movement characteristics to express what is going on in his unconscious and subconscious. Therefore, Butoh's dance can be regarded as the manifestation of Antonin Artaud’s theater of cruelty and the dancer’s body evokes Artaud’s body without an organ.