Butoh Dictionary

Concept used in Rhizome Lee's Subbody method called 50% inside, 50% outside emphasizing the practice that 50% of our attention is to be internal and the other 50% external. This way, we are not neglecting neither outside world nor inside world.

To the pupil of Jersey Grotowski, Stephen Wangh, the 50/50 concept is the third paradox of acting.

A Subbody model from Rhizome Lee, who organizes varying qualias into eight channels: (1) Body, (2) Movement; (3) Visual; (4) Audio; (5) Emotion; (6) Human Relationship; (7) World = Self; (8) Thinking—each with introvert and extrovert qualities.

Channels interact and overlap: sensations, emotions, or movements in one can provoke or bleed into another, creating multi-resonant, dimensional experience.

The Body channel includes physical sensations; Movement covers patterns like sway, vibration, or collapse; Visual and Audio encompass perception and sound, while Emotion relates to inner “weather.” Human Relationship addresses interaction and co-body experiences, World = Self unites identity and environment, and Thinking involves logic, judgment, and koan-like collapses.

The center of the model is the non-dual zone which blends all channels, dissolving distinctions.

In Shadowbody, the accident or emergency body is one of the human character tropes or butoh in real life that either inspires or resembles butoh.

Example: Those experiencing movement blunders, e.g. slipping on ice for 15 seconds.

In Shadowbody, the aged body is one of the human character tropes or butoh in real life that either inspires or resembles butoh.

Example: Old Russian woman (babushka) eating a plain loaf of bread while crossing the road (real sighting)

Original term for butoh coined by Tatsumi Hijikata. Ankoku means dark.

Also associated with butoh that resembles more of Hijikata's butoh.

In Shadowbody, the baby body is one of the human character tropes or butoh in real life that either inspires or resembles butoh.

The baby due to its multidimensional embodied resonance patterns is often seen as already being a butoh master. We were all butoh masters at one point.

In Deleuze and Guattari’s philosophy, “becoming-” describes a process of continuous transformation where identity is fluid, never fixed, moving beyond categories like human/animal or self/other.

"X" can be anything.

If I enter into a becoming-wolf for instance, it is not that “I act like a wolf,” but “I enter into a relational field where my rhythms, gestures, and instincts resonate with wolf-being."

So becoming is about resonance.

Concept from Rhizome Lee's Subbody denoting a background world such as what is often occurring at the subconscious level. The concept is frequently linked to the literal presence of what lies behind on stage—other performers, unseen forces, or hidden worlds that emerge from behind the dancer.

A central concept in butoh and Noguchi taiso, where movement does not originate from self-will but arises through external or internal forces—such as strings, qualias, or memories—diminishing the role of ego or personal control.

Drawing inspiration from a CT body scanner, the dancer “scans” their body for sensations and feelings.

Motimaru Butoh Company practiced this in a standing position while linking movement and arm gestures with the scanning of the whole body.

A Shadowbody term interchangeably called qualia tattoos, qualia yoga or qualia gong, which are all qualia-guided movement conditioning.

Using qualia/imagery for body work will often naturally let the central nervous system facilitate a more efficient series of muscles to perform whatever action there is to do. In this way, we can break old habits and possible inefficient movement. This is the idea behind ideokinesis, which is also a discipline of image-based body rehabilitation and posture correction.

A Subbody term denoting an edge or trigger. Viewed as a deep shadow. These have big potentials for artistic creation.

In terms of Shadowbody and especially the Christian-themed butoh Theokinesis, not all bottom bodies can be integrated, as some things are dangerous to "integrate." Instead, the emphasis is on transformation, and in transformation, some things have to die or be sacrificed.

A Tatsumi Hijikata concept of dancing in the most constricted space possible.

The method belonging to Turkish butoh artist Özerk Sonat Pamir which seeks to open awareness completely to every single point of the body foremost by the breath. By effect, emotions, feeling, and sensation is restored as well as the role each part may have.

A theatre term from Polish theatre director Jerzy Grotowski (1933 - 1999) expressing a poetic resonance linking humans, nature, senses, and cosmic elements.

In butoh, can be synonymous with the Subbody term life resonance.

An important butoh-fu creation by Tatsumi Hijikata where bugs gradually crawl on the body, giving the body a particular look that is a butoh trope though nothing to underestimate.

As shown in the Shadowbody YouTube found footage series known as Butoh in Real Life, certain characters can provoke or inspire the feeling of butoh.

Tatsumi Hijikata in his own butoh research was known to get inspiration from marginalized society. He was inspired by the sick or debilitated bodies he found not only in the Tokyo streets but the broken farmer bodies he recalled from his youth in the countryside.

These are characters that anybody can identify with in some way: (1) drunk body; (2) aged body; (3) baby body; (4) disabled body; (5) accident body; (6) sleep body; (7) possession body; (8) tantrum body

In Shadowbody, these are subtle movements that can be added to the body at any moment. They can begin the process of entering into a world or character and can also surface out of subconsciously-driven spontaneous movement.

They are: (1) vibration (micro and macro shaking); (2) sway; (3) wave; (4) twist (squirm); (5) shock (impulse, flick); (6) collapse (falls, micro falls); (7) expansion/contraction (stretch/shrink); (8) death (surrender, stillness)

A Shadowbody term for natural time, that is, of life's timing that doesn't have any set identifiable rhythm.

Think of the flight of a butterfly. Does the butterfly dance in a specific time like a ballet dancer? 5, 6, 7, 8? Butoh time has the following characteristics: (1) lack of rhythm; (2) nowness; (3) immediacy; (4) newness; (5) chaos.

Literal meaning is butoh notation.

The form of choreographic notation dependent on images or qualias.

The chimera takes on more than one qualia within different parts of the body. For instance, the arms can be tree limbs while the legs are rooster legs.

The chimera is often associated with the grotesque. Chimeras make use of deterritorialization of one or more body part.

The final part of the three-part process of Akaji Maro's Maro Method which is the practice of emptying the self so that the body becomes a vessel or cavity through which external forces (energies, spaces, or presences) act. In this state, movement arises not from ego but from the body’s openness to being moved by the surrounding world.

A key butoh concept inspired by Tatsumi Hijikata's writing Ailing Dancer in which resonance with the subconscious or dream world masks literal meaning, allowing movement and expression to emerge beyond straightforward interpretation. In other words, the body is abstracted.

Another term used is the obscured body.

A Subbody term simply meaning multiple Subbody dancers or group.

One of the 8 butoh spices in Shadowbody. These are the basic movement motifs found in butoh movement.

Also known as fall (micro and macro).

A Shadowbody term for developing intensity in a qualia.

A cone is visualized with a tiny hole the size of a needle at the very end. The qualia gradually travels down the cone toward the point/vertex. The closer it gets to the point, the more intense and concentrated it gets. Eventually, it come out from the little like a laser of that qualia.

A term used by Yukio Waguri to describe a state of genuine trance in which one enters deeply, yet retains awareness and control of the situation. Related to 50/50.

Yukio Makami termed this not drunk.

A term coined by Turkish butoh artist Özerk Sonat Pamir as part of his Breath Body method representing any point in the body which has lost awareness or feeling.

In butoh, we are expected to connect with every point in the body. Any point that has lost awareness is to be rehabilitated via breath.

One of the 8 butoh spices in Shadowbody.

Associated with surrender, stillness, and rest.

In the context of Shadowbody, this is when something appearing trivial, fake, playful, or superficial is placed in the category of profound.

Also called fraudthenticity or fauxthenticity.

The concept is inspired by Tatsumi Hijikata's writing Ailing Dancer where at the beginning of the writing he states, “Because of monotonic and anxious things storming the body, I might faintly be aiming at an opportunity to fabricate fake things within by wearing a haze to the body.”

According to Rhizome Lee’s in-class commentary, “fabricating fake things” was a reversal of the “authenticity” or “real” goal of creation. To Lee, this was one of Hijikata’s trickster-like moments of putting the supposed goal of theatre on its head.

Term related to deterritorialization and recontextualization where the ordinary function or meaning of something is made unfamiliar or changed to something else.

This is at the very basis of Viktor Shkovsky’s view of art. Shkovsky notes, “The technique of art is to make objects “unfamiliar,” to make forms difficult, to increase the difficulty and length of perception because the process of perception is an aesthetic end in itself and must be prolonged.”

In butoh a good rule of thumb to know that any object is not what it appears to be.

Shadowbody terminology of a portmanteau play on words between "definite" and "enigmatic" making definigmatic.

For butoh, it emphasizes the importance of not only having focus but also spontaneity.

A concept from Deleuze and Guattari describing the process by which established structures, codes, or territories are disrupted, allowing movement, thought, or desire to escape fixed boundaries. In artistic practice, deterritorialization opens space for novel forms, fluid identities, and unexpected connections.

Concept parallels that of recontextualization.

Example use in Shadowbody: the arm is deterrirtorialized when it enters into a becoming-eel.

The difficult is in not engaging pantomime but in Deleuzean concept of becoming-x, so a translation of intensities or "intensive differences" such as speeds or temperaments.

In Shadowbody, the disabled body is one of the human character tropes or butoh in real life that either inspires or resembles butoh.

Another term for Subbody. inspired by Aboriginal dreamtime, describing how the subconscious rises into the dancing body, merging dreaming and waking states into movement.

In Shadowbody, the drunk body is one of the human character tropes or butoh in real life that either inspires or resembles butoh.

A term the butoh scholar P Liao uses to describe the preliminary stage of butoh creation where one's vessel is emptied so as to have space to create.

Emptying can be accomplished through a number of methods such as forgoing thinking, nurture, entering into a hollow or transparent body or a Noguchi taiso water body.

A term the butoh scholar P Liao uses to describe the middle stage of butoh creation where one becomes present and involved in their current state. To Akjaji Maro's Maro Method, this could be associated with the initial Igata (mould).

To improvisational theatre, this could be associated with the "yes" in Yes, And.

One of the 8 butoh spices in Shadowbody. These are the basic movement motifs found in butoh movement.

Also expressed as stretch/shrink.

A Shadowbody term carrying two different modes. The first mode entails a surface definition where "butoh" is being practiced inauthentically, such as in a non-embodied way or stuck-in-the-head, or engaging in only pantomime.

The second is fully embodied or not stuck-in-the-head, yet is a parody of the first mode, trying to break all the rules of "true" butoh in order to find another form of butoh.

Term used to describe butoh that appears to be very fixated on glamor, often with a heavy emphasis on costume, as if it could be part of a fashion show.

Peter Levine’s felt sense is the body’s subtle, wordless awareness of inner sensations that carry meaning beyond thoughts and guide the release of trauma.

It manifests through multiple sensory channels: kinesthetic, proprioceptive, interoceptive, tactile, auditory, visual, and olfactory/gustatory.

As butoh artists, we have a responsibility to feel all of these inner sensations. Feeling and moving go hand in hand.

A subbody term representing the development of a qualia. It is most often in contrast to literalism or pantomime in movement otherwise known as juice (in Shadowbody). The development may inherently imply a clouded body.

A term from Deleuze and Guattari encompassing a segment of experience where the place/set/setting is not separate from the self.

To the butoh dancer, the body and place are linked. This can be related to the concept of the transparent body.

From Deleuze & Guattari's A Thousand Plateaus: “Climate, wind, season, hour are not of another nature than the things, animals , or people that populate them, [but] follow them, sleep and awaken within them. This should be read without a pause: the-animal-stalks-at-five-o’clock. The becoming-evening, becoming-night of an animal, blood nuptials. Five o’clock is this animal! This animal is this place!"

A Jerzy Grotwosky (1933 - 1999) term regarding an actor who gives themselves totally in performance — stripping away masks, defenses, and ego — to reveal their innermost truth. It is not about representing a character, but about an offering of one’s own being in front of others like a sacrifice.

Unlike the stacked body or chimera, the hybrid body does not have separately defined qualias but instead are merged together into a new qualia like an offspring or like yellow and blue making green. A little bouncy ball and a leech might turn into a fat homunculus that bounces all over the place with fat suckers all over it.

Created by Mabel Elsworth Todd (1880–1956) as a somatic technique using mental imagery to improve posture, alignment, and movement efficiency. By visualizing anatomical and kinetic patterns, it retrains the nervous system, facilitating more effortless and expressive movement.

In terms of butoh, ideokinesis shows just how powerful the perfect image can be in movement.

The second of the three-part process of Akaji Maro's Maro Method which the body is understood as a mold or cast shaped by lived experience, tension, and external pressures. The dancer embodies form not as a personal invention but as something poured into and solidified within the body.

The closeness in reaction time to stimulus, inside or out. The outcome becomes presence.

A Shadowbody term and exercise in cultivating intensity in performance.

A participant engages in a familiar strenuous or passionate activity whether physical, emotional, and/or psychological. Then the participant suddenly stops and shifts to another qualia.

Peter Brook once said, “Imagine one hundred blind people listening to you. The fact that you swing on trapeze, is irrelevant. But the impulse which takes you to the trapeze should be in what you say.”

In other words, it’s granted that we are intense or real about something in our lives. We can take that underlying intensity and transpose it onto something else.

A Shadowbody term denoting a literalism or pantomime in movement which has not been fermented yet.

Part of the Japanese somatic Seitai system which means “movement from within” or “life renewing itself from the source”.

It is the involuntary movement the body engages in for the purpose of re-balancing the body.

In butoh, the practice is associated with spontaneous chaotic, sporadic, and convulsive type of movement. Butoh artists Yuko Kaseki, Natsu Nakajima (1943 - 2024), and QUICK (of MUDA).

A Subbody term meaning resonance as a whole or in general to all the various modalities of our life in the world.

Similar to the term Brotherhood from Polish theatre director Jerzi Grotowski (1933 - 1999) expressing a poetic resonance linking humans, nature, senses, and cosmic elements.

A Shadowbody term where the in breath and out breath are in a 1-to-1 correspondence to the space, forming a lung out of the space itself.

Example: Traveling halfway across the room is inhaling halfway into the lungs.

The “in-between” of time, space, and being, often linked to liminality and paradox.

In butoh, ma resonates as the container or ground of the dancer's world. It implies creating space, emptiness, and quietness as the seedbed of creation.

Akaji Maro’s creative approach to butoh, structured around three pillars: (1) miburi/teburi: collecting body language (mining everyday body and hand gestures); (2) igata: mold body (sustaining forms shaped by experience and tension); (3) chūtai: becoming an empty vessel moved by external forces.

The first of the three-part process of Akaji Maro's Maro Method which is the process of gathering gestures, postures, and movements from everyday life and society, then distilling them into a performance vocabulary. Maro treats these collected fragments as a kind of living archive, forming the raw material for butoh expression.

Teburi is simply the focus on hand gestures.

An advanced Shadowbody term referring to the dancer’s ability to improvise within a set structure, such as choreography, where subtle “microtones” emerge as spontaneous details—alive and responsive in the moment.

A Shadowbody term for working with two or more qualias then forcing connections/associations between them, even if they are faint.

In Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, the question was raised, "Why is a raven like a writing desk?" A good butoh artist/poet may immediately make endless connections between these two qualias: (1) raven and (2) writing desk. These connections are how a semblance of story (albeit absurd) can spring about in performance. This is often a natural result of butoh play.

In context of Subbody, it is the dancing of something that moves the dancer but that is not understood by the dancer.

Often expressed as "carrying the mystery."

The audience does not know what it is and neither does the dancer.

A somatic, water-based system developed by Michizo Noguchi (1914 - 1998) with its own set of detailed exercises.

The practice enables the feeling of gravity and an effortless way to move via successional fluidity.

May also be known as the water body.

Butoh artists basing their movement in Noguchi: Yumiko Yoshioka, Julie Becton Gillum, Minako Seki, and many others

A term used by Yukio Makami to describe a state of genuine trance in which one enters deeply, yet retains awareness and control of the situation. Related to 50/50.

Yukio Waguri termed this coolness.

For Shadowbody, this is the most important state for butoh.

To butoh scholar P Liao, this could be associated with her first stage of butoh creation, emptying.

A key butoh concept inspired by Tatsumi Hijikata's writing Ailing Dancer in which resonance with the subconscious or dream world masks literal meaning, allowing movement and expression to emerge beyond straightforward interpretation. In other words, the body is abstracted.

Another term used is the clouded body.

A Shadowbody term which is a portmanteau play on the words obscure and secure.

We must become secure in the obscure, or resonate with mystery.

To Yukio Waguri, this is having “optimistic irresponsibility” for exploration.

In Shadowbody, the perfect image relates to the most ideal qualia or world, whether literal or abstract that adequately represents our internal environment.

Finding the perfect image is a shortcut in moving in a particular way. If we find the perfect image to embody, movement and choreography will come more easily.

Example: Tatsumi Hijikata found many perfect images for himself. One of the most known butoh-fus was the bugs crawl where bugs would gradually crawl on the body. This gives the body a typical butoh look with whole body detail dance that can be identified as a butoh trope.

Butoh intersecting with pop culture, often blurring the line between authenticity and parody.

In Shadowbody, the possession body is one of the human character tropes or butoh in real life that either inspires or resembles butoh.

Example: Religious or spiritual possession

A term mentioned by the theatre and performance theorist Richard Schechner to describe the activity directly before the actual performance. It is a type of proto-performance.

Oftentimes, the preparation before an actual butoh performance is the beginning of the performance itself or at least the beginning of a kind of ceremony or ritual.

Example: Putting on the white body paint.

A focus in the now of the internal and external environment. It is actively being here now. Presence is related to butoh scholar P Liao’s 2nd stage of butoh creation he calls encountering.

Presence is directly tied to resonance.

A Shadowbody term describing when the dancer embodies movement under the imagined conditions of prosthetic limbs—for example, a prosthetic leg or prosthetic feet.

A term used in Rhizome Lee's Subbody method, borrowed from quantum physics.

The root of a segment of experience, connected with sensory interpretation. Items in nature such as a stick or a rock will feel very different from each other.

Can be thought of as the inherent properties of experience that can be accessed through introspection alone.

Qualia shares a parallel with spirit and world.

Example use of term: Balloon qualia, water qualia

The transition of one qualia or scenery into another.

Rational example: natural progressions (e.g., fire → smoke → ash → soil → flower).

Irrational example: unexpected or non-sequitur shifts (e.g., fire → baboon judge → ravioli).

Emphasis is placed on stretching the in-between state or ma.

A Shadowbody term denoting body-part butoh-fu interchangeably called qualia yoga or qualia gong, which are all qualia-guided movement conditioning.

Using qualia/imagery for body work will often naturally let the central nervous system facilitate a more efficient series of muscles to perform whatever action there is to do. In this way, we can break old habits and possible inefficient movement.

This is the idea behind ideokinesis, which is also a discipline of image-based body rehabilitation and posture correction.

In Sascia Pellegrini’s research on sense amplification and its affect on time, he suggests that the butoh performer may develop the ability to feel overlapping and evolving times (temporalities) acting at the same time. He gives the examples: “the tempo of the body, the plastic skin [a prop used], the studio, the tempo of the music, and that of the silence; […] the tempo of the air con units, of the natural light, of the temperature and the odour of the room and body.”

We may then see that each and every qualia can come attached with its own time. How does each qualia change our body timing, whether as a whole or as parts? We can also say q-time; q can be anything, e.g. tree time, frog time, ice-cube-in-hot-sun time.

The process of placing gestures, objects, or actions into new, unexpected contexts, transforming their meaning and perception. In performance, it allows familiar movements or elements to gain fresh, often surprising or absurd significance.

Can function through a mechanism similar to that of puns.

Example recontextualization: An open-handed, shrugging gesture of “I don’t know” is recontextualized into the act of carrying heavy dishes in a restaurant.

Reduction by X is a Subbody term denoting the ability to increase or decrease the intensity of a butoh variable such as timing, flexibility, and size.

A reduction by X implies that a Regeneration by X is also possible.

When an object or system naturally vibrates at a specific frequency in response to an external vibration of the same frequency.

In butoh, it means embracing and embodying any particular qualia or world.

A Subbody term where ones whole body twists into a position and then changes the position into a completely new twisting position.

In Deleuze and Guattari, a rhizome is a non-hierarchical, non-linear network of connections, where any point can connect to any other, resisting fixed structures or central origins.

The concept is heavily associated with Rhizome Lee's Subbody method.

Term coined by Tatsumi Hijikata as a negative resonance with the in-between space, described as infiltrative, decaying, and giving life of its own.

Any transition from point A to point B can fall into rotting ma, where the dance glitches or gets lost. In Tatsumi Hijikata's words: “A hand ends up going for something and never coming back.” (Wind Daruma)

He adds, "[there is] a struggle with invisible matter inside the body."

A Shadowbody term which is a portmanteau play on the words second nature and nurture.

Second Nurture expresses that the body itself is a most basic given, and so we are to automatically listen to the body at every moment.

In context of Subbody, it is the veiling or concealing of a world/qualia understood by the dancer. The dancer makes use of the clouded body.

Often expressed as "carrying the secret."

The audience does not know what it is but the dancer does.

A Jersey Grotowski term noted by Stephen Wangh as being the first paradox of acting which is having serious fun, or playing seriously. Serious can mean true or authentic to oneself. Yet if we get lost in authenticity, we can risk losing play or fun, yet if we get lost in play or fun, we can risk losing authenticity.

One of the 8 butoh spices in Shadowbody. Also associated with impulse and flick.

In Shadowbody, the sleep body is one of the human character tropes or butoh in real life that either inspires or resembles butoh.

Examples: sleep deprivation, sleep walking, sleep paralysis

The non-physical essence of a person, place, being, or thing often associated with consciousness, emotions, and/or soul.

In relation to butoh, it can correlate to an animistic perspective (e.g. Shinto) where all things are alive with an individual spirit.

Carries parallels to the terms qualia and world.

The stacked body is a Shadowbody term that denotes a body containing one qualia base and a secondary or tertiary qualia on top of it. For instance, we might take on the qualia of zombie, which will serve as the foundation, but on top of that, we might add yogi.

Turkish butoh artist Özerk Sonat Pamir called this concept overlapping.

Method created by Rhizome Lee. Means the subconscious body. The Subbody method is based in the subconscious, resonance, and the rhizome.

One of the 8 butoh spices in Shadowbody. Also associated with nurturing movement.

At Subbody, swaying was a common, grounding practice that was constantly happening, such as when watching performances or even being idle outside of class or performance.

Similarly, shuckling is a Jewish ritual, usually swaying forward and back, but can also go side to side. It can also have a tendency to go into shake.

This motion can also be a bit of stereotypical behavior in psychiatric wards.

A perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation of one sense involuntarily and consistently triggers another—such as hearing colors, tasting shapes, or feeling sounds.

In butoh, this is extraordinarily useful for body/movement discovery.

Tatsumi Hijikata’s butoh-fu The Blind Girl contains the synesthetic line: “The fourth blind girl is listening to sounds / using her forehead, her ears, her skin, / and all the nerves in her body.”

A Shadowbody term where any variable that in decrease or increase in intensity should be played around with freely.

Synthesizer Knobs are directly linked to the Subbody term Reduction and Regeneration by X.

Example synthesizer knobs: size, density, timing, flexibility.

A term used at Subbody to denote the perfect timing for things.

The Greek term kairos is another word for tame—a time when conditions are right for the accomplishment of a crucial action : the opportune and decisive moment. (Marriam Webster)

In Shadowbody, the tantrum or freakout body or emergency body is one of the human character tropes or butoh in real life that either inspires or resembles butoh.

A concept coined from Antonin Artaud (1896–1948) referring to the emergence of a secondary self that mirrors, amplifies, or distorts the actor’s inner psyche. This “double” allows hidden emotions, impulses, and subconscious drives to manifest physically, serving as a bridge between internal experience and external performance, often creating intensity, tension, or uncanny presence on stage.

Closely parallels Rhizome Lee's concept of the Subbody.

A performance approach developed by Antonin Artaud (1896–1948), a French playwright, poet, and theorist, emphasizing raw emotion, physicality, and the direct expression of the subconscious.

Connection to butoh: Artaud’s Theatre of Cruelty inspires many performers to explore the body and psyche beyond conventional narrative; some may suggest that butoh may emerge as the natural outcome when Artaud’s system is fully realized in practice.

Tatsumi Hijikata was very fond of Antonin Artaud and even played Artaud’s last piece made for radio, Pour en finir avec le jugement de dieu (To Have Done with the Judgment of God), in class; inspired by this, Hijikata went on to create a series of stream of consciousness sound scores himself, exploring the expressive potential of voice and audio in butoh practice.

A Christ-centered butoh dance-theatre approach and experimental performance art practice within the Shadowbody ecosystem. Literally translates to movement (kinesis) of God (theo).

Term from the theatre method of Jerzy Grotowski’s (1933 - 1999) denoting when the actor transcends ordinary performance, using body and voice to fully realize impulses from deep within. The body becomes transparent, merging action and experience, and the actor offers themselves completely, dissolving personal ego to create a direct presence and pristine immediacy.

Or transforming to butoh scholar P Liao, being the last step in butoh creation where creation from one's end occurs.

In improvisational theatre, this can be associated with the "and" in Yes, And.

A Subbody term denoting a body in full resonance with both self and surrounding.

One of the 8 butoh spices in Shadowbody. These are the basic movement motifs found in butoh movement.

Squirming can be a form of this twist movement.

One of the 8 butoh spices in Shadowbody. The vibration spice encompasses shaking of all frequencies.

The butoh body in the state of water world.

May be associated with Noguchi taiso.

One of the 8 butoh spices in Shadowbody. These are the basic movement motifs found in butoh movement.

Term coined by Masaki Iwana (1945 - 2020) evolving the traditional term of Hijikata's Ankoku Butoh by transforming the dancer’s inner darkness under the 'white sun'—a metaphor for clear light, and so reaching purity and clarity.

The totality of a segment of experience, connected with sensory interpretation. Items in nature such as a stick or a rock will feel very different from each other. They can feel like different worlds.

A world can be thought of as the inherent properties of experience that can be accessed through introspection alone.

The world shares a parallel with qualia and spirit.

Example usage: tree world, water world

An improvisational technique where a performer accepts what another offers and adds to it, building the exchange collaboratively.