00:04 

I was born. I was born. I was passive. I didn't decide to come to this world. I was
born. Who created me? Who brings me to this world? Many people died who I liked so
much and also influenced me a lot. 00:32 But I didn't want to tell you: “You are dead.”
So you are now in me, more active, alive than before. 00:47 生きる(to live)

00:59 One time Kazuo Ohno asked Tatsumi Hijikata: “What is Butoh?” And then Hijikata
said Butoh is violence and eros. Violence is fighting with yourself. Violence is some
resistance and revolution. 01:18 All this, he said, violence and eros is big love we need.
01:26 These violence and eros come sometimes directly on the stage from some Butoh
dance performances. That mean the extremely radical form and all times fighting
against mainstream and fight with yourself. 01:54 That is underground, that is anarchy.,
that is dadaismus. If you swim with a million people, same direction. That is freedom,
that is peace. 02:09 But never avant-garde art. We must be all times hungry, very
hungry. All time curiosity, hungry, like children. So all times, pure, like that. So I think
that Hijikata was until his last day. 02:37 So, that is somehow, violence to do pain.

02:53 Butoh history, in the beginning was a protest against conventional, against

traditional, against Americanized, against the modern cultural situation in Japan,
especially after the Second War in the ‘50s, the end of the ‘50s. 03:20 That was the first
Butoh history. So they did extremely form as provocation, more happening style, time to
perform on the street or not serious usual space like a dance stage or in theater. 03:47
And extremely intentional unbeauty style, ugly form and dirty form. Because everybody
thought dance should be beautiful body and beautiful movement and beautiful costume.
04:10 That, they hate. No! Dance is life. Life is not all times beauty. So, extremely and
grotesque and ugly and that. And that was a scandal, that was extremely a provocation.
And sometimes I feel Butoh found another aesthetic. 04:36 What is real beauty? Real
aesthetic, real beauty is so intensive life, like a first moment the baby came from the
mother. First moment. Like a monkey face and all bloody and sweat... But it's beautiful.
And this aesthetic, the real beauty we can discover in nature, and I think Butoh show us,
through the dance art, our dark zone. 05:21 Usually we don't want to see it, but look! But
not only look and then cut. Look more, look more, look more, more…. And these
become grotesque, but at same time, so different aesthetic. 05:42 And then finally,
Wow! That is the miracle zone!
05:51 On the dance way, yes, but as I told you, Butoh is life. In life, I'm not already “so
weit”. 06:08 And I remember Fumiaki Nakamura, he wrote the one book and he spoke
about “Butoh dancer and Butohist.” 06:23 Butoh dancer, well, it's the people who dance
Butoh. They are Butoh dancer. But Butohist can be shoemaker, florist or painter or it
doesn't matter. They can be Butohist. That means, these people doesn't dance on the
stage of Butoh, but their life is Butoh. 06:52 What is that, Butoh? Of course, it's not easy
to explain, but I feel when I saw Kazuo Ohno, even Hijikata, but I didn't know Hijikata’s
life too much. Kazuo Ohno, he’s on the stage as Butoh dancer, great master. But his
life, how he cooked, how he spoke, how he worked in his garden. 07:28 Everything,
that's Butoh for me. That means he is integrated in every detail. Insect life is not as
dance imagination. Real insect. 07:45 When he played with a grandchild, he is a child,
world. And that is for me Butohist. So he was already Butoh dancer and Butohist.
08:01 And I wanted to be Butohist. But even on the stage for dance way I tried every
time this. 08:14 To be Budohist on the stage.

08:19 We have, not only body and spirit. And Kazuo Ohno gave me, that's my opinion,
gave us, for first time, how important it is to create something with spiritual honesty.
That means, you must be honest to yourself. 09:01 You must be honest to the nature.
Otherwise, what you create is everything, non true love zone. Like that. For what you
dance? That was his question. How do you want to dance? Maybe we have to move
more isolated, the body right side, left side up and down, or more pushing from inside to
outside and take back to the inside or the space inside organ or something.
09:46 Everything helps somehow. But Kazuo Ohno’s question was: “for what you
dance?” For what you want to learn? And Kazuo Ohno’s strong mission was: I want to
dance real true love. True existence. 10:14 And even after our life continue to discover
it. I asked me all times, for what, Tadashi, you want to dance? For what? 10:30 And if I
think about Butoh, many people tried to dance Butoh, but many people tried to feel also
this spiritual side of Butoh. That's very special for me. 10:53  This in between feeling in
between zone, “間” Ma, exists in Japanese life everywhere, not only the “Ma” from the
Buddhism. 11:09 Japanese life has a lot of “Ma”. And “Ma” was more important than this
side or other side or black or white, and I feel that in our life, also the space in between,
that is our existential zone. And I love to exist in between zone. 11:48 I like that I can be
this side, that side, also even not for nobody space I exist.
12:06 I didn’t decided to come to Butoh. I met Butoh. That means maybe before I met
Kazuo Ohno, what I wanted was already Butoh dance character or Butoh spirit or Butoh
way. But I didn't know what, and after I met Kazuo Ohno for me it was clear.12:37 Yeah,
that is the Butoh and I met Bhutto, and Bhutto I saw first time was already inside of me,
and thank you Kazuo Ohno, you opened the door or windows that I see now, Butoh on
my side. 12:58 Japanese lifestyle, of course, connected something of ground. We at
home, we don't carry the shoes. That means “skinship” with the tatami floor. 13:21 And
we are sitting not on the chair. In everything this relationship with ground was important
and it's a typical Japanese. And of course, Butoh is a global and worldwide, but I think
specially through Kazuo Ohno and Hijikata, Japanese landscape, Japanese lifestyle
was important to understand this Butoh. 13:58 If someone want to dance, then dance
and more jump or turn. And blue sky, or the smell nice, or the butterfly or, you know,
and this feeling was all the time in the dance in the history. 14:20 And Hijikata changed
this completely. Dance is this, pain, broken, dark, sticky, ugly. You know. Oh, that was
for me, also when I saw first time, so shocking. 14:38 That exists as art, life and all of
this? But I couldn't forget. Everything came to his dance interpretation, dance stage
also. One of the dance piece that I saw him live, 1970. 15:10 It was the Hosotan, that is
a kind of sickness, leprakrankheit (leprosy). A kind of this and a very sticky, dirty, poor
atmosphere was on the stage. And for me it was the first time in the dance performance
that I saw more ugly side than the beauty side, you know?16:02 And that was for me,
very shocking, because I was not expecting it like this.

16:17 Butoh is so open. You can do everything in Butoh and I like that. I’ve studied first
theater and I worked long years in theater, normal drama theater. 16:38 You have the
rule, if you work in theater, how you have to rehearse, the time and the takes and the
scene and so everything quite clear. Of course you can experiment, but there is a clear
system to work in theater. 17:01 For Butoh is, for me, so free, so open that I like,
because I like to improvise also. I made some conceptual concepts for my work for
dance, but I never keep absolutely fixed. I change a lot. And even what I found a day
before and I change it again, and nobody said, “oh, it's not possible” or “it's not allowed”
or something. 17:41 No. In Butoh you can do everything. And then, this passion to do
something now or never, this strong, extremely decision. I feel Butoh continue every
time even more. 18:05 That attracted me a lot.
18:12 I enjoyed first time, Kazuo Ohno’s workshop in Vienna. I knew about Butoh before
because I saw first time 1971. 18:31 Tatsumi Hijikata’s dance in Tokyo and name
“Butoh” I knew when I was a student, but Butoh was more for me far. I didn't want to join
the Butoh. So when Kazuo Ohno came to Vienna and gave the workshop and after the
workshop, he came to me and asked me: “Can you help me? In my interview tonight, to
translate?” 19:08 He was very, for me, normal, simple and so warm person. Not a big
Butoh master. He spoke a lot about his dream, about his universal story. 19:35 I was so
absolutely fascinated, and then I thought: “this person is for me, kind of “erzatsvater.”
19:46 Like my father and even like a shaman. And I was fascinated from his miraculous
story and also this person, Kazuo Ohno. 20:03 And then the interview, all his answer
was like about motherland or about insect life or about moon and stars and not directly
Butoh is that, that, that. Oh, it was impossible to translate. 20:24 And but I translated it,
then journalists had a problem to write down what is the Butoh. And then I started to
translate my own interpretation, my own feeling, after Kazuo Ohno spoke, explained
about miracle story. 20:49 And then journalists was are very happy and wrote something
and then left. Kazuo Ohno asked me, “How was the interview?” Then I said, “Sorry, it
was almost impossible to translate directly one to one. So, I started to explain, a little bit
with my own feeling, interpretation. I am very sorry, and I was not a good translator.”
20:49 And then he said, “That is very Butoh.” And why? You know, you cannot dance
Butoh if some sentence exist or some picture exist, exactly copy or exactly
interpretation and is not possible, like life. 21:52 Every life is so different, you cannot
explain your life is from baby until old and die. Of course, that is the process that
everybody did, or every human being. But you never can explain exactly. So you must
explain what you feel during this story. 22:22 And that is exactly if you dance with your
body. That was maybe the point that I could immediately and kind of crash. “Yeah, why
not? I can dance!” 22:41 But if you dance on the stage, my case, my body exists the
same time with completely another time feeling. 22:59 I cannot control this time. It's not
like our time one hour, sixty minutes. This time doesn't exist in my body.

23:16 If I paint my body or face the usually the white, I can concentrate more, more
more because very intimate. Uh, just I have a relationship with me, so with myself. Like
that. 23:47 So that was a very nice time for me to concentrate. But for what I want to
concentrate? It's not only for the show. Something in the life I win or I get another time
zone, through this few minutes, sometimes thirty minutes long to paint white. 24:22 You
see you, you change step by step. Not only the color in your face and through the white
color and some other skin, other costume. 24:39 And then your inside feeling change
somehow. And then your focus changed somehow. You see you different because that
is not more, you, in the daily life. 24:54 So, this metamorphosis I like very much, but on
the stage, sometimes I don't feel my heart’s rhythm. I don't feel my temperature.
Nothing. 25:12 Maybe I am already dead, but dead-life, or I don't know, next step.
Something, another zone, another rebellion happened with the body. 25:37 And then of
course, everybody speaks about our spirit, “geist” and everybody has this spirit and
that’s why we have fantasies or we have an imagination or we have feeling. 25:59 But I
feel on the stage, specially, this exist around me and sometimes inside me. I cannot
explain, but I feel, real concrete. It's not about hallucination or something, no! 26:23 Very
concrete! That happened on the stage, sometimes a few second. A kind of trance
situation. 26:32 So, I'm sure this moment something happens. Un-visual or something.

27:12 Kazuo Ohno said, “Everybody can dance Butoh, but you have to dance until you
die.”