Becoming Nothing To Become Something Methods Of Performer Training In Hijikata Tatsumis Butoh Dance Tanya Calamoneri by Tanya Calamoneri 9787182073305, 7182073307 instant download after payment.

ABSTRACT

This study investigates performer training in ankoku butō dance, focusing

specifically on the methods of Japanese avant-garde artist Hijikata Tatsumi, who is

considered the co-founder and intellectual force behind this form. The goal of this study

is to articulate the butō dancer’s preparation and practice under his direction.

Clarifying Hijikata’s embodied philosophy offers valuable scholarship to the

ongoing butō studies dialogue, and further, will be useful in applying butō methods to

other modes of performer training. Ultimately, my plan is to use the findings of this

study in combination with research in other body-based performance training techniques

to articulate the pathway by which a performer becomes “empty,” or “nothing,” and what

that state makes possible in performance.

In an effort to investigate the historically-situated and culturally-specific

perspective of the body that informed the development of ankoku butō dance, I am

employing frameworks provided by Japanese scholars who figure prominently in the

zeitgeist of 1950s and 1960s Japan. Among them are Nishida Kitarō, founder of the

Kyoto School, noted for introducing and developing phenomenology in Japan, and Yuasa

Yasuo, noted particularly for his study of ki energy. Both thinkers address the body from

an experiential perspective, and explore the development of consciousness through bodily

sensation. My research draws from personal interviews I conducted with Hijikata’s

dancers, as well as essays, performance videos and films, and Hijikata’s choreographic

notebooks. I also track my own embodied understanding of butō, through practicing with

these various teachers and using butō methods to teach and create performance work.