Dark dance

EROS, ILLNESS AND THE SACRED

Ankoku butô – dark dance – belongs to the antinomian current of dance (or anti-dance, as it has been called) that descends from Nietzsche’s philosophy. I begin this talk considering dance after Nietzsche – tracing the return of the archaic gods in Isadora Duncan’s unrestricted Hellenism and Nijinsky’s Faun and Rite of Spring, to the ecstatic dances of Mary Wigman and Anita Berber’s provocative eroticism. With butô’s first steps in the Japanese underground, Hijikata Tatsumi initiated a radical reappraisal of the body, drawing inspiration from this western anti-tradition and from his upbringing in the remote region of Tôhoku, inhabited by rice farmers and kami. Through his dances and writings, a convergence of eros, illness and the sacred emerges, themes which obsess and inform my own dance practice.

Presented at the Occulture Conference in Berlin, on 20th October 2023.