Dancing Into Darkness: Butoh, Zen, and Japan [Hardcover]

Butoh is an avant-garde Japanese dance/theater form with a somewhat specific aesthetic, yet continually being re-invented. Butoh was created in the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima to express the horrors of the ongoing effects on the Japanese people, and also to break through Japanese taboos. Butoh is dance, theater, political activism, and most importantly a healing art. Butoh is personal, communal, spiritual, expansive, and feminine; it is meditation in movement, stillness, expressing the darkness and light. I am not an expert on Butoh, but it has elements that connect with my soul, and is the dance form in which I am best able to create. In this dance I find joy, express pain, and move beyond the ego.

I read Sondra Horton Fraleigh's book "Dance and the Lived Body" seven years ago, and in a recent Amazon search for books on Butoh I came across this book: "Dancing into Darkness".

Sondra expresses her experience of watching and dancing Butoh with exquisite depth. Her words bring me directly into the experience of the dance and the dancer, and it brings tears to my eyes. I am touched so deeply by Butoh that every element evokes strong emotions, creativity, and memory within me. Her book is composed as a diary of separate essays, which are quite lovely. I love her style. I think many people could enjoy this book, even if they are not interested in Butoh. She weaves together so many elements of spirituality, Zen, mythology, motherhood, birth, friendship, love, the earth, and the Goddess. She articulates her own thoughts and experiences, as well as those of many Butoh dancers. I especially love reading about the Butoh dance exercises, which are simply incredible, in my own experience as well as in this book. I was introduced to this dance form within a workshop with Eiko and Koma Otaki many years ago when I was 17, and it had a profound impact on the course of my life.

Fraleigh's book is a hidden gem in the search for documentation regarding Butoh. When recently trying to research the subject for a performance art project I found myself confronted with the task of gaining access to this impentratable medium; There is not a lack to discover, just merely a lack to provide.
"Dancing Into Darkness," acts as both journal to Fraleigh's personal descovery of Butoh and also the relationship that the medium has today (for some of artists) with Zen - which ultimately results in her internal descovery - an experience, that as a reader, is overwhelmingly beautiful on ocassion.
The text also acts as a kickoff point in understanding the conceptulization of the movement and gives reference to the facts and exploration of these to a certain point. Chapters are headed by instances of caligraphy and haiku, which perfectly set mood and pace.
The only negative criticism that one may have is that in terms of pure research, though this does provide the necessary spiritulaism that one needs in understanding the peice, it lacks the essay like critques that some may desire for their own work. Either way this is a book that should suit all, purerists, intellectuals, newcomers and those seeking the spiritual.

Butoh is a dance 'genre' that, for the most part, is hard to pin down into a digestible definition. Perhaps that is the beauty of it, perhaps the nature of it. Butoh, one could say, evades definition and just 'is'.
Fraleigh's book takes this quality account; in the form of diary entries and snapshots of classes and performances, Fraleigh writes from a personal place, describing events and ideas of her own while providing some kind of context for Butoh's background, variability, and poetry. I was particularly interested in her exploration of the way butoh explores/uses the feminine principle.
I suggest this book for those who have grown tired of reading purely academic journal articles or textbooks. Fraleigh is a dance scholar and and thus, an academic, but writes this particular book in a way that it is both beautiful and readable. She gives us a good sense of what butoh involves, but also humbly acknowledges her position as someone writing from a Western perspective.