A history of butô

Author / Creator

Baird, Bruce, 1968- author

Available as

Online

Physical

Summary

"Bruce Baird offers a new account of butô, one of the most important performance arts of the latter half of the 20th century. Tracing key name in butô's first two generations and following its glob...

"Bruce Baird offers a new account of butô, one of the most important performance arts of the latter half of the 20th century. Tracing key name in butô's first two generations and following its global migration, A History of Butô displays its founders' and practitioners' creativity, and clarifies their ideas about gender, ethnicity, and technology and new media. Baird guides readers with an approachable, expansive view of a form with which he is uniquely familiar"--

"We begin in the middle. Paris. Late fall 1977. Three Japanese avant-garde dancers, Murobushi Kô, Carlotta Ikeda (Ikeda Sanae), and Hanaoka Mizelle (Yoshioka Yumiko) arrived in Paris, but not to present an avant-garde dance. Rather they aimed to audition a burlesque show at the cabaret Le Jardin Champs-Élysées. If this were a movie, we would show the three approaching the cabaret and then pan to show the nearby Eiffel Tower. Do not be fooled though. Their goal was to use the cabaret as a foot-in-the-door, with the hope of performing their experimental dance. Alas, their burlesque show did not appeal to the promoters. It was just too strange. They tried the Crazy Horse Saloon and Folies Bergères, but their show was not only too bizarre, but also much too small for such venues. At this point, they gave up, their hopes of establishing a foothold in France dashed. Yoshioka reached out to her mother (a high-end cabaret producer in Japan), and she arranged a job for them in Tehran"--

Show More