The famed Japanese dance choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata once said:
“When one considers the body in relation to dance, it is then that one truly realises what suffering is: it is a part of our lives. No matter how much we search for it from the outside there is no way we can find it without delving into ourselves.”
In this quote, he’s referring to a kind of dance he created. A niche Japanese art called butoh. Translating to dance of darkness, butoh performances mix taboo subjects with stylished storytelling.

And if you’ve never experienced butoh before, you can get tickets to an upcoming show in London called U-BU-SU-NA. The award-winning choreographer Kentaro Kujirai has created a show that celebrates the mysterious and dark history of the Tohoku region of Northeastern Japan.
U-BU-SU-NA is also a reclamation of lost stories and dignity, with Kujirai casting a light on the darkness of discrimination against certain people from the Sendai area where he was born.
Performances run from Thursday 14th – Saturday 16th of November at The Coronet Theatre.
Of course, it’s helpful to know exactly what is involved in butoh dance shows.
And if you’re curious to learn more about this distinctive art form, read on. Because there truly is nothing like it in the world…
What is Butoh?

Butoh first developed in the 1950s through the creative genius of Hijikata and fellow dancer Kazuo Ohno. At the time, Japan was pulling itself out of the destruction of World War 2 and both dancers felt a restlessness they couldn’t shake off.
They questioned the very nature of dance and believed their home had been stifled by a hundred years of Western dance traditions.
So, Hijikata and Ohno created a new kind of dance that celebrated “the squat, earthbound physique…and the natural movements of the common folk,” as Hijikata described it. In other words, a dance style that celebrated the freedom of the Japanese body moving without restraint.
What this looked like in practice was dance moves that reflected a Japanese commoner’s connection to nature. Moves that caused the body to bend as if a dancer was sleeping on a futon, bowing and praying at a shrine or tilling a field.
Another inspiration for butoh was darkness. The exploration of the taboo, the grotesque and the forbidden. Themes everyday Japanese were hesitant to talk about that Hijikata and Ohno dragged into the light with their first butoh performance, Forbidden Colours in 1959 at a dance festival.
Based on a novel by Yukio Mishima, the show explored homosexuality and ended with a live chicken held between the legs of Ohno’s son Yoshito and finished with Hijikata chasing Yoshito off stage into the shadows. The show was so controversial that Hijikata was banned from the festival.
And yet, for all its controversy, Forbidden Colours had introduced a brave new dance form to Japan. The popularity of butoh would only grow in the years to come.
The evolution of Butoh

Into the 1960s, Hijikata and Ohno began to take on students for butoh and established different teaching styles.
The former became known as the ‘architect of butoh.’ Hijikata was a ferocious technician, teaching his students how to use their bodies in union and specialised in working with large butoh dance companies. Meanwhile, the latter was known as ‘the soul of butoh.’ Ohno spent more time on solo artists and worked to bring out their individual characteristics.
By the 1980s, butoh performances were starting to be seen outside of Japan on a large scale. It was in this period that butoh costumes developed into what one New York Times author described as “full body paint, (white or dark or gold), near or complete nudity, shaved heads, grotesque costumes, clawed hands, rolled-up eyes and mouths opened in silent screams.”
During this time, the world saw just how close butoh artists dance on the boundaries of death. There was an incident with a troupe called Sankai Juku in Seattle, which involved the performers hanging upside down from ropes on a tall building. One of the ropes broke and the performer died, which led to national coverage and butoh gaining more exposure across America.

While Hijikata and Ohno are generally considered to be the founders of butoh, the art form itself is hard to pin down. As Shea A Taylor points out in Butoh: A Bibliography of Japanese avant-garde dance:
“What makes butoh unique from other dance forms, such as modern and ballet, is that there is no formal style or technique that can be codified, which makes defining (and studying) the form difficult. When studying modern dance techniques one is taught a technique for moving…with butoh, dancers use imagery to help them guide their movements, but there is no measure as to how the movement should be executed. The imagery cues are as different as the individuals teaching and learning it.”
Nevertheless, there are several markers you can look at when trying to define a traditional butoh performance:
Dark costumes
Butoh costumes reveal the dancer’s primal and natural qualities. For instance, dancers use white paint and clothing to signify childlike purity and eliminate preconceptions.
A distorted face is another key element. Dancers might create this with a mask. This choice removes the urge to make calculated expressions. Everything must be natural and raw at the moment.
Visceral movements
Audiences describe Butoh as an “assault on the senses.” Each performance aims to evoke a visceral reaction. Dancers engage the audience in a dialogue, creating a pit-in-the-stomach feeling.
This is where the butoh performance truly begins. Dancers invite the audience to stay within the pit and question where it came from.
Often, these feelings are created by the slow, deliberate motions of the performers. They may move in a zombie-like fashion, twitch their fingers and roll their eyes into the back of their heads.
Other times, a dancer will become deathly still. When done well, this technique can heighten the tension around a performance and make the audience more aware of the individual performer.
Improvisation
Just like jazz players, butoh dancers will often improvise in how they react on stage. Instead of typical Western choreography where dancers are in synch with each other and the music, butoh performers rely on their senses.
For example, one performer may speed up a movement if they notice that another member of their troupe is slowing down to create a juxtaposition. It’s all in the pursuit of capturing a certain mood and presenting the main themes of the story that’s being told.
Watch Kentaro Kujirai’s U-Bu-Su-Na in London
Now that you understand what butoh is, you’re in a position to make an informed decision about the U-Bu-Su-Na show in London.
From Thursday 14th – Saturday 16th November, butoh master Kentaro Kujirai is putting on a one of a kind show with award-winning poet Shuri Kido. U-Bu-Su-Na translates to ‘the mystical divine power that protects the land where people were born and raised, and those who live there.’
The show delves into the darkly beautiful history of Japan’s Tohoku region and follows in the footsteps of legendary butoh founders Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno.