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FESTIVAL

The Theatre Stage of the Cultural Centre "Klub Zak" would like to present an extraordinary event entitled THE FESTIVAL OF BUTOH DANCE - POLAND-JAPAN: DIALOGUE OF CULTU RES that will take place between the 24th of October and the 6th of November 2005 in the Cultural Centre "Klub Zak" in Gdansk - Poland.
During the Festival we will have the pleasure of presenting Butoh masters - Tadashi Endo and Atsushi Takenouchi, as well as two young Butoh groups - Shinonome Butoh from Japan and Amareya Theatre from Poland.
The Festival will also include a 10-day creative workshop project led by Atsushi Takenouchi and entitled "The Mandala of Life and Death". The workshop project will lead towards a performance/presentation that will be shown on the opening evening of the Festival's presentations. The project is open to all those who wish to explore and realise their creative potential and want to enter a "dialogue of cultures"; participants should already have some experience in the work with the body (theatre, pantomime, dance, etc.).
The Festival will be supplemented by lectures on Japanese art and culture and also by an exhibition of Butoh dance photography by Karolina Bieszczad.
The motto of the autumn Festival of Butoh Dance - "Poland-Japan: Dialogue of Cultures" - is meant to underline our wish for the Festival to be an event that on the one hand will be a bridge linking Poland and Japan, and allowing an exchange and "dialogue of cultures" to take place. We would also like the Festival to be a platform for a broader discussion on the current state of culture with focus on the phenomenon of "dialogue of cultures" and interweaving of the Eastern and Western culture.

We have attempted to compose the programme of the Festival in such a way so that the audience would be able to encounter a wide variety of faces of Butoh with each of them embodying a different type of interweaving of elements of Japanese and European culture and being an amalgamate of East and West. By confronting different faces of Butoh we wish to trigger an indepth reflection on the subject of the cultural aspects of Butoh as a genre of performing arts, its essence, philosophy and cultural roots.

PROGRAMME OF THE FESTIVAL
24.10 - 01.11
Workshop Project led by Atsushi Takenouchi entitled "Mandala of Life and Death";
the project will lead to a performance that will be presented on the 2nd of October

26.10 - 06.11
Butoh dance photography exhibition
author: Karolina BieszczadPerformances:

02.11
Presentation of the workshop project
"Do" Shinonome Butoh group (Japan)

03.11
"Ma" Tadashi Endo

04.11
"Ki Za Mu" Atsushi Takenouchi and Hiroko Komiya

06.11
"Do" Shinonome Butoh group
"Xenos" Theatre Amareya

During the Festival we will encounter Japanese Butoh artists -Tadashi Endo and Atsushi Takenouchi - who both live in Europe and travel extensively world wide with their performances and workshops. They have contributed to the import and development of Butoh in Europe. What is characteristic for both of them is that they are in a continuous movement between East and West and their dance is, to use Tadashi Endo's expression, "a dance on the borderline between Europe and Japan".
Another facet of Butoh dance will reveal itself during the confrontation between two young groups from Japan and Poland that will present their performances on the same day. These groups are representatives of the youngest (third) generation of Butoh dancers.
And finally the photographic face of Butoh that we will meet in the work of Karolina Bieszczad who will present her Butoh dance photography exhibition.
The after-performance discussions will be a platform for discussion that will focus on the problematics of the "dialogue of cultures". During these discussions we will have a closer look at Butoh as a phenomenon that is an amalgamate of Eastern and Western influences. By posing a question about the cultural roots of Butoh, we will also touch on the issue of continuity of tradition and heritage and ask such essential questions as: whether contemporary dancers of Butoh recognise and respect the heritage of Butoh and its traditional elements in their work, and whether they continue the way of dancing and thinking about dance that Tatsumi Hijikata expressed as "the revolt of the flesh" We will also pose a question about the current cultural situation of Butoh and how it is being influenced by tendencies such as globalisation and commercialisation of culture; does the authentic Butoh have a chance of surviving those pressures?
When in the 1950's Butoh was emerging in Japan as the "revolt of the flesh" (Hijikata), which was an abrupt explosion of artistic expression targeted against the traditional conservative norms and conventions present within the dance and theatre culture, as well as against the socio-political situation, degradation of culture and dehumanisation of social relationships, at the same time Europe was simmering with the avant-garde movements that expressed the need of liberating the art and artistic creation, renewing the culture and filling the ontological void of the Western civilisation caused by the hecatombe of the 2nd World War..
Butoh dancers led by Hijikata and Ohno, together with the artists such as Tadashi Suzuki or Shuji Terayama belonging to the "little theatre movement" - Shogekijyo , as well as theatre people from the underground Angura engeki, were developing their innovative art in the atmosphere of Japanese roots movement called Ampo . Butoh was not directly political but Butoh artists criticised the political enslavement of Japan and americanisation of its culture, and what is more important for our discussion of "dialogue of cultures" - they turned in search for inspiration towards Europe.
Liberation of the body and seeking its idepth organicity became the fundament of Butoh. Butoh tai (jap. butoh body) became the embodiment of this state - an "empty body" liberated from the shell of social, political and cultural conditioning. This was a body not formed by the society but as a part of nature possessing its own inner landscape", a hipersensitive body in a state of constant flux and in off-balance dancing with the "god of weight" (Hijikata). Transformation through "emptying the body" became the key concept of Butoh technique. It was through transformation, understood as the act of creating a new liberated body, that Butoh dancers realised their dance revolution. This "revolt of the flesh" was not only about freeing dance art from the constraints of traditional classical norms to reach an authentic expression. It was about giving birth to a new human. Through embodying the inner darkness of the body and tresspassing the cultural taboos Butoh dancers were liberating the human spirit.
The "dance revolution" initiated by Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno resonated very strongly with the "theatre revolution" speared by such European theatre reformers as Jerzy Grotowski, Peter Brook, Ariane Mnouchkine. The theatre research carried out by J. Grotowski as well as his ideas in relation to the function, aesthetics and ethics of theatre mirrored in certain aspects the philosophy and technique of Butoh dance, especially of the way Butoh founders understood the status and crucial role of the dancer's body, the function of the dance and dancer and the social and political function of performance.
Artists of East and West drew inspirations from each other's cultures and developed a "transglobal" front of alternative culture of revolt and innovation. This "dialogue of cultures" has given birth to new tendencies in art, new understanding of the role of art and artist, and of the function of dance and theatre in the society. Indisputably Butoh has played a crucial role in this reform movement. Born as a cultural amalgamate of Japanese folklore, traditional codified performative genres such as Kabuki and N? as well as of European influences, Butoh has with time spread itself around the world and since that time exerts strong influence on European performance culture, inspiring also artists of different art genres.
We hope that during the Festival the audience will have the opportunity to trace, experience and discuss the above mentioned variety of facets of Butoh dance and that in a "dialogue of cultures" the we will all discover the uniqueness of this dance. [Text: K. J. Pastuszak]

FOR MORE INFORMATION SEE: www.klubzak.com.pl, e-mail: kasiajulia33@poczta.wp.pl, tel. +48605228391 (Coordinator of the Butoh Dance Festival: Katarzyna Julia Pastuszak-The Theatre Stage of the Cultural Centre Klub "Zak", Gdansk (Poland), UL. Grunwaldzka 195/197)

ARTISTS AND PERFORMANCES:
ATSUSHI TAKENOUCHI
Atsushi Takenouchi - joined Butoh dance company "Hoppo-Butoh-ha" in Hokkaido in 1980. His last performance with the company "Takazashiki"(1984) was worked on by Butoh-founder Tatsumi Hijikata. He has been working on his own Jinen Butoh since 1986 and created solos "Tanagokoro", "Ginkan", "Itteki" as a universal expression of nature, earth, and ancient times and his impressions of the moment, formulated from the people around him, and the environment. He toured Japan between 1996 and 1999. In 1999 he toured Jinen Butoh "Sun & Moon" and led Butoh workshops in Europe and Asia for six months. In 2000, he formed a team called "Kodo suru Iseki" and toured Europe. In 2001, he organized various projects including: a week-long butoh workshop camp for local dancers in New York; creation and presentation of the collaboration piece BREATH 2001 in UK; and a tour of his solo in UK, Poland and Paris. He also continued his workshop at local educational institutions and dance schools. This year he was selected for the Japanese Government Overseas Study Program for Artists. His main works include STONE, Itteki andTenmon. Since autumn 2002 he has been mainly based in Europe for one year arts fellowship funded by a Japanese government. And he has been working on Butoh dance collaboration project with dancers and actors in France, Poland and other countries.
Description of Atsushi's creative work:
For his butoh project "Jinen", he looks for forms and movements of dance in nature, plants and animals as well as man-made artifacts. At the same time, he believes that dance is born from expressions, movements and consciousness that appear on the surface as well as deep inside the human being. He has been carrying out the project of dancing in nature as well as the artificial environment both in Japan and overseas, and gives a structure to the essence of such experiences with his solo performance pieces. He gives workshops in the communities he visits, and works with the local dancers and artists to create group dance pieces. He also gives workshops to children and the physically challenged.

Performance "KI ZA MU"
"KI ZA MU"
(jap. to carve very important experience or memory into the body)
Dance: Atsushi Takenouchi
Music: Hiroko Komiya
Duration: 60 minutes

This Butoh performance is contemporary improvised. Dance the memory of the space, air, the sound which he has met in the various corners of the world and he has carved into his body. At the same time,
Dance the space, air, the sound which he has carving now this moment. KAROLINA BIESZCZAD - Butoh dance photography exhibition
Graduated American Studies and Theatre Studies the Jagiellonian University in Cracow. Her first encounter with Butoh took place in Australia and since then she continues to trace with her camera the steps and movements of various Butoh artists all over the world. Her interest in Butoh has fruited in MA thesis devoted to the issues of culture's influence on Butoh. Nowadays Karolina lives in London where within the framework of doctoral studies at the Brunel University she focuses her research on Butoh's influence on disciplines such as photography, philosophy, psychology.

SHINONOME BUTOH GROUP
Shinonome Butoh, a Butoh dance group created in 1999 by three dancers - Yuko Kawamoto, Chisato Katata i Asuka Shimada. In old Japanese language "shinonome" means "the sky brazened deep orange before dawn when darkness fades away in daylight". Already as teenagers Shinonome dancers have encountered Butoh dance and they were disciples of Yukio Waguri - a direct student of Tatsumi Hijikata the great founder of Butoh. Shinonome regard themselves as the third generation of Butoh dancers. The traditional technique and philosophy of Butoh is present in their work, however the dancers underline that they wish to develop their own style and unique quality of Butoh not restricted by the conventional framework and style of traditional Butoh. By choreographing themselves, they can introduce, in their dance, what they really want to do and what they are interested in. Their dance reflects their positive feelings about expressing themselves using their bodies. The freshness of their approach creates a new face of the "dance of darkness". Shinonome dancers try to through their dance help the audience find precious diamonds in the darkness, ugliness and grotesque.

Performance "DO" (jap. extreme)
Director: Yuko Kawamoto
Dancers: Yuko Kawamoto, Chisato Katata, Asuka Shimada
Music: Skank (Mexi)
Duration: 50 min.

TADASHI ENDO
Tadashi Endo - the director of the Butoh-Center MAMU and the Butoh-Festivals MAMU in G?ttingen - embodies in the truest sense of that word the wisdom of both, the Western and Oriental dance and theatre traditions. He developed his own style of dance which he calls "Butoh-MA" and describes as "walking on the tightrope between East and West, between theatre, dance and performance". His repertoiry includes No theatre, Kabuki and Butoh, as well as the traditional forms of Occidental theatre, which he studied at the Max-Reinhard-Seminar in Vienna. In this synthesis of worldwide traditions, Tadashi Endo transcends the boundaries of each, although butoh's trancelike absorption into oneself continues to be visible as the stating point of his movement. In his extraordinary dances, Tadashi Endo succeeds to express the fields of tension between Ying and Yang, the male and femal and their ever lasting alteration. He uses the suggestive power of concentrated movement phrases to explore the closure of life's cycles. He opens up a voide space, which can be either calming or irritating, and in the experience of which the observer submerges him-/herself into a world beyond time and words: that is MA. (MA means in Zen-buddhism:"emptyness" and "the space between the things".) In 1989 Tadashi Endo met Kazuo Ohno for the first time and they both realized a deep mental relationship which is increasing since then. Tadashi Endo dances his life, his dreams, his feelings in his very special movements and deep expression. He is touring all around East- and West-Europe, USA and Japan.

Tadashi Endo and his Butoh dance - MAMU BUTOH
What does it mean - MAMU
MAMU is the combination of the two words in Zen-buddism Ma and Mu
MA - means space in between
MU - the big emptiness
But the sound of MAMU seems to be like the first word of a baby.
Performance "MA" - Tadashi Endo
Dance and performance concept: Tadashi Endo
Music: Ryuichi Sakamoto
Duration: 60 min.

Tadashi Endo has created "MA" performance in 1991. The piece became a great success in Japan and was very highly estimated by the founder of Butoh dance - Kazuo Ohno. In Zen Buddism MA means "emptiness" and "the space in-between". Butoh MA is about making visible that which is invisible. The minimum of movement allows the expression of emotions and situations to reach the maximum of intensity. It is more important to keep the balance between energy, tension and control than to concentrate on the aesthetic aspects of the movement.
MA means to be IN BETWEEN.
MA is the moment just at the end of a movement and before the beginning of the next one.
MA is like standing on the riverside watching the water floating along.
You want to reach the other side but the other side means death. You want to finish your life on this side but not yet, you are half here and half over there. Your soul is waiting for the last step - completely calm - without breathing - completely quiet - not dead and not alive - this is MA.
The performance "MA" shows images of transformation, it embodies the cyclical nature of the universal history, which is not bound to time. This performance invites the spectator to visit his own intimate inner country - the inner void of MA. Tadashi Endo says that similarly to the concept of MA, his life is a way of being in-between. He has spent half of his life in Japan and another half in Europe and his dance is like climbing on the verge between Japan and Europe.

AMAREYA THEATRE
Amareya Theatre was established in January 2003 out of a deep need of community and a need of meeting beyond the borderlines of conventions, styles and genres. Amareya works at the Integrational Artistic Centre "Winda" in Gda?sk. Amareya - in Japanese means "heroic devotion, unconditional commitment" - this is the rule governing our creative work, this is our devotion to dance and theatre and the inner necessity we have to pursue, this is also a bow of gratitude to the remarkable teachers whom we have met on our path.
The training and creative work of Amareya Theatre are based mostly on the Butoh dance technique, and our pursuits concern the field common both for dance and theatre - that which is fundamental in them, i.e. the psychophysical presence of the performer. We seek to return to the roots of the body - its organicity and infinite creative potentialities. We believe that total presence of the actor-dancer, radiating from beneath the costume of form and technique, has the power to touch the spectators and lead them towards their inner selves.
We are an independent self-financing theatre which works outside the mainstream and doesn't aim to comply with the demands of the commercialised art. In our work we also try to remain cognisant of the present social, political and cultural context. Through our creative and educational work we wish to be a kind of "nomadic theatre" - a theatre of change and exchange. We look for a radical technique of moving the body and new forms of expression to communicate a living experience of the present times and to build images which will touch the spectators and awaken their sensitivity. We wish to speak of what is important - about relations, identity, social mechanisms and limitations, dreams, sensitivity and bodily liberation.

PERFORMANCE "XENOS" - THEATRE AMAREYA
Director: Katarzyna Julia Pastuszak
Dance: Agnieszka Kami?ska, Katarzyna Julia Pastuszak, Aleksandra ?liwi?ska
Music: Piotr Pawlak, Ryjoi Ikeda
Costumes: Sabina Czupry?ska
Duration: 50 min.

Here and now - the ashes of the 20th century, the time of stability of the globalised capitalism, consumerism's euphoria and the new (dis)order of the contemporary world.
Underneath the surface of the embellished mediatised reality, conflicts are simmering. Everydayness brings along with it new reports of eruptions of hatred and violence; "The 25th Day of Hatred - even infants were dressed up as terrorists" - read the newspaper headlines -an echo of the first pages of Orwell's "1984". Torn and full of paradoxes, the contemporary world reaches us broken into pieces, incoherent, surreal and absurd.
The body, bombarded by images of violence and its various forms present in the daily life, imperceptibly assimilates the mechanisms of aggression and auto-surveillance, and soaks in the ideology of consumerism and hatred towards the Other, this hatred being one of the fundaments of the manipulated propaganda of fear. Wrapped up in the shell of ignorance, we become blind to human being, blindly hating the Other, too.
Is it possible to regain and protect body's sovereignty so that it no longer follows nor reproduces the patterns of aggression the rules of which we learn and either consciously or unconsciously assimilate through patterns of behaviour, movement, thinking? How do we protect sensitivity and prevent disintegration of the ethical tissue of humanity? How to prevent the contemporary world's cruelty and lack of ethical values and moral order, from depriving us of the sense of existence?
"Xenos" is an attempt to answer those questions. The conflict between Xenos and the Guards who dwell in the Dead City becomes a metaphor of the struggle for liberating the body from the uniform of socialisation and the mechanisms of violence.
"Xenos" shows a conditioned social body that fulfills and reproduces role-patterns of the perpetrator and the victim. As a rite of passage of the main character and a record of Guards' transformation, the performance becomes a metaphor of the political disease of the contemporary world drained by the plague of violence. The performance strives also to be an image of struggle between "life" and "form" and human being's quest in search for identity beyond roles.
Xenos can be described as homo viator, a travelling revolutionary nomad, who heals sick cities. He comes to save the Dead City from total degradation and to restore the city's ethical tissue and sensitivity. Despite the absurdity of the Guards' violence he wants to restore the sacrum and trigger in the Guards the anamnesis of life that is hidden deep under the shell of the uniform and removed far beyond the borders of the city's infertile soil. The radical nomadic body of Xenos - a vehicle of "life" unhindered by the socially conditioned violence and hatred, tears apart the geometrical order of the Dead City.
The Dead City inhabited by the Guards is a devastated barren landscape deprived of sacrum. The spatial geometry reflects the geometry of power and surveillance, "form" that manipulates and constrains human "life". Bodies of the Guards degraded to the uniform are a testimony of the condition of the modern man, a bodily document of the ontological void and dramatic quest for contact with another human being, a search for "life" suffocated by "form".
Bombarding the body of the intruder, the guards become a metaphor of violence in everyday life and of powers that rule today's world. The brutality of the form is shown on the level of the work of the body of Guards.
The stage as well as the bodies of the dancers become battlefields where the will of life and revolt against violence struggles against aggression and brutal rules of coercion.
Body in Theatre Amareya becomes a tool of critique. By showing body bombarded by violence of the Guards who mechanically reproduce the pattern of social behaviour, Amareya Theatre wishes to force the witnesses into reflection and awaken defiance of violence and social gleischacht, defiance of the control of the body and its subjugation, defiance of the dehumanization of death.
"Xenos" is to be a deep affirmation of life in the variety of forms that it may manifest itself in, it aims to protect the "poetry-in-everydayness". It is a call for hidden dreams and fragile intimate relationships that are in danger of being degraded and demoralised in the contemporary world.