Aaron Kerner

Associated activities:

 

Butoh Workshops:

Shoshana Green, a Dance Therapist based here in San Francisco, regularly holds Butoh workshops. It is hoped that in conjunction with the exhibition that we might collaborate with Green. (I recently programmed an evening at Performance Art Institute, and found working with Green a very rewarding experience for all considered.)

 

Butoh Performances:

There are a number of local Butoh dancers in the Bay Area; it would seem only natural to organize at least one performance in conjunction with the exhibition. Local performers include Hiroko and Koichi Tamano. (Tamano was one of Hijikata’s former students). Any such performance would need to be arranged, but there is no shortage of possibilities in the Bay Area, which has an enthusiastic Butoh following.   

 

Film series:

The film program can be held in the Coppola theater on the San Francisco State University campus. The program is designed to illustrate the assorted ways in which Hijikata collaborated with filmmakers and how his aesthetics were adopted in Japanese cinema. In addition to his collaboration with Hosoe Eikoh, he also partnered with Donald Richie, the late renowned film critic and historian, to make a short film. Teruo Ishii, known for his spectacle driven B-movies, worked with Hijiakata a handful of times; he plays a number of different roles—a crazed “Igor-type,” an executioner. Look Hijikata up on Wikipedia and the image that you’ll see is him seated next to Abe Sada, the historical figure made infamous in Oshima’s In the Realm of the Senses. The picture was taken during the shooting of Ishii’s Love Crime, which in part features the Abe Sada story. The set and costume design in Ishii’s film, largely taken from Hijikata’s Butoh, has subsequently influenced the work of Shinya Tsukamoto.

 

Program 1: Butoh Shorts

• Navel and A-Bomb, Hosoe Eikoh, 1960

• Gisei [Sacrifice], Donald Richie, 1959

• Anma (The Masseurs), Takahiko Iimura, 1963

• The Rose Colored Dance, Takahiko Iimura, 1965

 

Program 2: Hijikata and B-Movies

• Love and Crime, Teruo Ishii, 1969

• Horror of a Malformed Man, Teruo Ishii, 1969

• The Tattooed Swordswoman, Teruo Ishii, 1970

 

Program 3: Butoh’s Legacy in Contemporary Cinema

• Soseiji [Gemini], Shinya Tsukamoto, 1999

• Tetsuo: Iron Man, Shinya Tsukamoto, 1989

 

Symposium:

“The Flow of Influence”

Although it is not discussed, Hijikata drew from a number of different sources, including things like modernist painting—Francis Bacon, Willem De Kooning. (His notebooks clearly demonstrate this.) Hijikata’s Butoh though always remained steeped in Japanese culture. Performance groups such as Sankai Juku have brought the form to Europe, the United States, and beyond. The symposium explores the fluid nature of Hijikata’s Butoh aesthetics—migrating between different schools of Butoh, different artistic practices, and across borders.