Dance like bull

>> Bone of Earth unlocks the mysteries of butoh

by MARITES CARINO

Pinning down a definition for butoh is as tricky as eating miso soup with an ice cube.

"Butoh is a way for me to find out who I am," says 48-year-old butoh dancer and choreographer Yukio Waguri, through a Japanese translator in a phone interview from Toronto.

Throughout his career, Waguri's work has been influenced by Tatsumi Hijikata, one of the masters and founders of the dance form. "My teacher has taught me that nature is a teacher too. Cats are teachers, leaves are teachers and stones are teachers."

This time, the earth is teacher in the solo which makes its North-American premiere at L'Agora de la danse this week.

"I named it Bone of Earth because we are all living on the earth and I know that we are all part of the earth. And in some way, the body is the earth itself," he says.

Butoh, a post-WWII Japanese dance form influenced by surrealism, was a revolt against modern dance and Westernization that attempted to define Japanese culture.

In its 40-year history, the form involved such varied performances as Hijikata strangling a chicken to death on stage in the late '50s, and a dancer plunging 80 feet to his death after a rope broke during an outdoor Seattle performance in 1985.

When Waguri was in his teens, he wasn't dancing but practicing a martial art: "Twenty-eight years ago I was doing karate. I heard that Tatsumi Hijikata had the most strict dance studio, and I wanted a challenge. At the time I joined there were eight people joining, and three months later I was the only one left. They left because the training was very strenuous."

For almost two years, Waguri trained five hours a day from midnight to 6 or 7 in the morning. But the nocturnal hours were not the only gruelling aspect.

"Once I had to be a bull and had to walk like that for five hours, or instead I had to be a stone statue for five hours," says Waguri. And what goes through one's mind when being a bull for five hours? "I started dancing with Hijikata when I was 20 years old and I never had any other dance training. And what I was thinking was: 'When is this training going to end?'"

Waguri collaborated with Hijikata until his death in 1985, and after 20 years studying butoh, he continues to develop the art.

The one-hour solo choreography Bone of Earth is divided into four parts, which Waguri compares to the seasons, or stages found in Buddhism: "Life, ageing, illness and death." And through this work, he discovers and explores within, to find out what is new and what is old in his body. "It's better to say that each person will find their own butoh instead of making it into a category," he explains.

From what I've read, it seems butoh is something very intimate and personal, and one's discovery about the dance is intrinsically linked to self-discovery. But if each person finds something different through the form, then what exactly is it that unites butoh?

Switching briefly to English, Waguri calmy states: "Dance is paradoxical."

Bone of Earth at L'Agora de la danse (840 Cherrier), Friday, Nov. 17 and Saturday, Nov. 18, 8pm, $14-21. Call 525-1500 for info