Butoh Dictionary

This is Shadowbody exercise in the development of presence, involving 10,000 duplicates or 10,000 parallel worlds of one's self. In each world, each of you follow the exact stillness or movement you are currently engaged in. Essentially, one has an army of 10,000 reinforcing one's every movement.

That is the first part of the exercise. The second part of the exercise calls for a signal so that the 10,000 of the dancers instantaneously absorb themselves into the 3d body.

When the eye is half closed and half open so that one sees darkness above and light below. It can come attached with the concept of 50% inside and 50% outside.

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.

A Shadowbody term which is the same as clouding or obscuring, 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 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.

A very basic walk in butoh. The Japanese term is hokotai. One walks as if they are a pillar of ash. Any sudden movement, and the ash dissipates.

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.

A Shadowbody exercise for public site-specific butoh which experiments with the line that separates the world of dance and everyday mundane movement. one moves in such a way that straddles the line between being noticeable and unnoticeable.

A Subbody concept related to when interacting with a partner, one is a constantly shifting the state between touching and not touching or finding that in-between/ma.

In Shadowbody, a character motif of the muscle world. The bizarre body builder is a good way to explore strange shapes with strange flexions/extentions, and twists.

In Shadowbody, this is a 2-person exercise where two people communicate to each other with a made-up non-human sign language.

This is a Shadowbody exercise in building intensity where the participant is either in stillness or movement. The participant will be given a series of qualias to experience within the vapor, but they will all be harsh environments. In each circumstance, the stillness or movements of the 3d body will not be affected outside of a subtle but powerful shift in presence due to continuing the identical movements despite the circumstances.

Here are example vaporized worlds that increase in intensity: (1) There is a terrible hurricane; (2) The world is made of only lead; (3) The abyss or void opens which nothing escapes.

A term used in Tatsumi Hijikata's stream of consciousness monologue To Prison roughly meaning difficult or traumatic incidents in life that can lead to material for dance. He used it when he started viewing the world as an unhappy place after he saw his father getting beat up.

A Shadowbody term for intentionally cutting off or failing any movement or resonance pattern. Can be part of the work of discovering one's weakened body.

This exercise was shown by Denise Fujiwara at the 2000 Seattle Butoh Festival. The dancer’s body is full of water. A single fish swims to every location. Then more fish appear till there a hundred. Then the process reverses until all the fish disappear. Originally, the movements are meant to be minimal, but also try larger movement if this resonates.

In Shadowbody, this is a floor exercise composed of finding lines in the actual body to contact on the floor. For instance, I may draw a real or imaginary line that spans from the underside of my arm, cutting across my chest and winding up on the upper-side of my other arm. This will be the pathway that the body will draw on the floor.

A Shadowbody term where one body position or posture changes contexts, e.g. the arm gestures for what shifting into the arm gestures for prayer or orans.

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 concept where the entire body is incased in a shell that only has 1 cm of space. Which means that there is only that space with the head, between fingers, pelvis, arms, etc. Something moves you (such as a disco or an image) and you are made to dance within that space given.

A comprehensive training and performance practice developed by Min Tanaka (Japanese dancer, b. 1945). It treats the body as an open, ever-changing “climate” that is constantly influenced by and responsive to external forces — environment, people, time, and space.

Another word for butoh-fu coined by SU-EN butoh company suggesting that in the butoh context, "body words" is a more apt translation of “fu” than “notation.”

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.

Exercise given during a Yuko Kaseki workshop. In a given space, walls are there to run into and rebound off of. The body spontaneously resonates with these physical boundaries but one keeps going from one wall to the other. Eventually, the space gets smaller and so the walls get closer. Continue rebounding. The space gets closer and closer until the walls fully encase the body yet we keep that rebounding going on inside the body.

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

A Shadowbody multiplicity term which describes the process of breaking the body into tiny bits.

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, butoh that inspired by the concept of psychodrama to inspire a dance or exercise. The subject deals with real psychological issues and attempts to work them out in an embodied fashion through narrative.

In Shadowbody, this is a sculpture to freeze into. Stacking one body over another is a plus. Being upside down is also a plus. A jumble, a knot, or a Hans Bellmer piece can be thought of. The group forms into a sculpture of one absurd organism.

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.

In subbody, can factory is a term taken from Hijikata's butoh-fu images. It represents a memory (especially childhood memory) with very rich associations/qualias.

In Shadowbody, this is an exercise where one is both a ceramic artist and the clay. As one freely moves, one molds themselves into different positions. One is also simultaneously entering into clay molding = massage. The body is composed of only clay. Eventually, one crafts one particular shape. Then one takes themselves to the oven to cook. After, one falls and breaks into to many pieces.

The concept of seeing something as if for the first time with curiosity. Related to P Liao's breakdown of the butoh process (2 of 3) labelled as encountering.

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.

A Shadowbody portmanteau play on words mixing "choreography" and "improvisation."

Choreography does not mean there is no improvisation. Within the choreography, there are different degrees of improvisation.

Also related is the ability to keep an open choreography where if the chance calls for it, a choreographed moment is replaced by an improvised one.

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 Subbody term used in the process of space and choreography to express stage or space positioning of bodies that is too neatly structured, too linear, neat, or predictable such as what is seen in a city park.

In contrast, there is the rock garden.

In Shadowbody, this is the same concept as paper sheet puppet but with clay or Play Doh.

Simply when in performance, the eyes are closed. It makes it easier to go inside the body with eyes closed. However, the same effect can occur when the eyes are open through glass ball eye and other manipulations. It is not encouraged to make a habit of the closed eye.

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.

This is a deterritorialized face exercise where a group gets in a circle and collectively makes one co-face, each person a part of the face such as eyes, lips, cheeks, etc. For purposes of visibility, they might all be in a ball and close together. One participant will mirror in the face what the group’s face is showing.

The exercise can also be reversed where the co-face is mirroring the one individual’s face.

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 Shadowbody group exercise where one participant is the head of the whip and travels in quick ridiculous pathways while everyone holds hands. If the whip is ever broken, participants are to immediately return to the chain.

Group exercise/improvisation engaged in at Shadowbody that begins in a circle initially with everybody holding hands, and the circle rotates while participants step back, forward, and around without letting go of the hands.

In performance, this is simply when the eyes are crossed. To get the effect at first, one can extend one's arm in front of them. One can look at the finger as it travels between the eyes. This can make the eyes cross.

A Subbody term simply meaning the mundane, everyday world and body when it is not in the butoh world or body.

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.

A Shadowbody concept that borrows from contact improvisation. Essentially, dead contact is contact improvisation executed in a a dead or weakened body fashion.

One of the 8 butoh spices in Shadowbody.

Associated with surrender, stillness, and rest.

A term used by some butoh practitioners when butoh and contact improvisation are mixed together.

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 Subbody term meaning the ability to go into minute detail and is related to fine motor skill. The butoh dancer tries to have somatic awareness of every single part of the body.

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.

A devotional death butoh term where all moments of dying in the dance are automatically viewed as a surrender to God.

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

This is a popular exercise engaged in physical theatre and contemporary dance which is executed as followed in the space:

If one person stops, everyone stops, and when one person resumes moving, everybody resumes moving. A variation of this exercise which was shown by Imre van den Bosch, a site-specific theatre director and educator, is for the entire group to stop at the same time.

In Shadowbody, a tongue exercise where one lets the tongue dangle out long like that of a dog. From here one can move the head so that the tongue really dangles.

In Shadowbody, not to be mistaken by glass ball eye, this is the eyes that goes from either completely open or completely shut as some dolls do.

Shadowbody term related to the multiplicity body where the body is composed of endless tiny dots that all have resonance patters and move. Being able to collapse the body into tiny movement is vital to find various detail dance.

In Shadowbody, this is a tongue exercise where there is a dragon inside the mouth. This imagery is also used in qi-gong.

In Shadowbody, this is the concept where a body part takes an extreme amount of time to do one function, such as the Kazuo Ohno exercise of taking several minutes to simply open the hand.

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 physical theatre concept where movement has an echo effect.

In Shadowbody, these are various eyes that watch from the corner of the eye.

In Shadowbody, this is a chimera exercise. Two or more body parts are chosen and they are associated with different emotions.

The eyes of the daily world (with the assistance of the eyelids and eyebrows) that embody emotion. The main emotions are happiness, sadness, fear, anger, surprise and disgust. These eyes need to be deterritorialized.

In Shadowbody, this is a chimera exercise where one part of the face gives one emotion and another part another. For instance, the mouth can exhibit deep disappointment and the eyes, euphoria.

In Shadowbody, this is a jumping wild exercise where emotions are sifted through in constant change. First, the emotions can be acted out in the face, but and then they can be acted out without the facial expressions or gestures associated with them.

An intermediate/advanced Shadowbody exercise which is not about shifting emotions but keeping one emotion while shifting qualias. How would an angry flower react?

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.

The following is inspired by Turkish butoh guide Özerk Sonat Pamir’s face exercise where the face controls the rest of the body like a puppet master. At first, one can form a 1 to 1 correspondence with parts of the face to parts of the body. Then one can link an expression or feel to a part of the body.

A form of facial shockk, an isolated shock.

“What is a tic?” asks Deleuze and Guttari in a Thousand Plateaus. “It is precisely the continually refought battle between a faciality trait that tries to escape the sovereign organization of the face and the face itself, which clamps back down on the trait, takes hold of it again, blocks its line of flight, and reimposes its organization upon it.”

A term used in Shadowbody denoting that any moment where the body truly has not executed or worked in the intended manner is an opportunity for inspiration and even an incorporation for a qualiain a butoh-fu.

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.

In Shadowbody, this is training other parts of the body not used to fine motor detail.

Example exercise: Writing With Other Parts of Your Body

Take a pen or marker and try to hold it with different parts of your body, e.g. in the belly button, between the elbows, between the neck. Try to write something legible. If this skill is practiced enough, there will be sensory input and fine motor function in that certain space. For many of these placements of the pen, the entire body will have to assist.

An exercise noted by Maurreen Momo Freehill and involves the face mirroring the shape and qualia of fingers in front of it.

In Shadowbody, this is a world where only your eyeballs exist floating in an ethereal space or an ocean.

A popular group movement practice where a leader is mirrored by a whole group. There are many ways to flock, but in general improvisational dance, there is always one leader being followed and everybody else follows behind, and if the leader turns, then a new leader naturally emerges because a new leader will be in the front of the group.

A Tatsumi Hijikata butoh-fu term which is butoh's neutral dead look in the face.

A Subbody term (but may be used in same way by other butoh artists) that represents moments of synthesis, resonance/transcendence/transformation from an edge, shadow, or kan.

A Subbody term that represents moments of resonating with that which one cannot resonate with. kan is the edge or difficulty and flower is the synthesis, resonance/transcendence/transformation of the difficulty. Rhizome Lee looked over Hijikata’s entire butoh-fu and located select kan qualia he felt were severe.

This exercise was given in one of Özerk Sonat Pamir’s workshops which he references Anita Saij, founder of the Nordic School of Butoh. Participants walk throughout the space and are given a series of instructions: (1) keep one person to your front at all times; (2) Keep two people in your view at all times; (3) keep one person to your front and one person to your side; (3) keep one person in your view and another outside of your view. Variations can be played with.

A word play from Shadowbody combining the four elements: fire, water, earth, and air. The term is used to express dancing the 4 elements.

Like a doll’s eye, these eyes are immobile. The gaze is placed. near the horizon. Or one can form a parallel line from eye level to ground without placing attention to any particular area, but all the area in the field. One can even look at any particular point then spread the gaze to the whole scenery which is vague. The eyelids are relaxed. Pupils do not move. One tries not to blink, and if one does, let it be a subtle flash.

A Shadowbody exercise, also called suction, the participant moves with as much surface of the body suctioned to the ground or wall as possible. One can also imagine a high gravity or centrifugal force situation.

Example qualia-world: One enters the carnival ride known as Gravitron, which is a spinning space ship causing those inside to stick to the walls. Try to un-stick yourself in various ways, though it proves almost impossible.

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!"

This is the crossed eye, but then one eye straightens out. To attain this, first cross the eyes, and then one of the eye straightens out.

A Subbody term referencing building awareness and incorporating into the dance to the joints in our body that have very limited movement such as intermetacarpal joints and the intercarpal joints of the hand or the sternoclavicular joint.

A Subbody term that deterritorialized the skin as we usually think of it and the skin grows larger to encompass more of the space, and this hidden skin can connect to others and so we are able to feel them.

There is a type of high intensity work that butoh artists such as Diego Pinon and Coco Villarreal engage in. The pattern which can be called a ritual involves getting participants into a high stress physical and/or psychological and/or emotional state until the limits are reached or breached. The participant will have given a signal of having enough. At this point, a dance begins.

Such an extreme requires a very conscious facilitation for safety. The facilitator takes on a lot of responsibility and must be ready for anything. The facilitator should also stress that the participant has their own responsibility to know their limits. Coco supplements the ritual with sound, voice, and smudging. The high intensity will have been worked up to via prior exercises and warmups.

Example rituals:

A circle forms connected with rope and one participant throws the body onto the rope only to be slung back via the collective effort of those around the circle. This goes on until the participant is exhausted or has had enough and raises arms as to signal submission. If another intensity ritual is not added onto this, the improvisational dance will begin at the center of the circle.

One participant is followed by a crowd of people making fun of the participant with words and body language. This goes on until the participant has had enough and raises their arms. Then the dance begins.

One criticism of high intensity edgework is that the participant might not be able to surpass the state of antithesis which leads to synthesis. In other words, the ritual will have not found a resolution, and if this happens, the exercise could create new emotional and/or psychological issues or make prior ones worse. Caution is advised.

Japanese term for the ash walk which goes back to Tatsumi Hijikata. One walks as if they are a pillar of ash. Any sudden movement, and the ash dissipates.

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.

This is a Jerzy Grotowski term where the actor possesses the as Grotowski says in Towards a Poor Theatre, “the attitude of giving and receiving which springs from true love: in other words, self sacrifice.”

He further expresses, “One must give oneself totally, in one’s deepest intimacy with confidence, as when one gives oneself in love.”

In Shadowbody, the hover is a low level movement (though can also take place along a wall) with the focus being a constant hover one inch from the ground by as many parts of the body as possible.

This is a Shadowbody group exercise similar to crazy zipper, the participants get in a circle and put their hands in the center then grab hands at random. They then have to undo the knot without breaking hands.

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 play on words mixing gesture and ingestion. It is related to the concept of fermentation. The concept simply means to always develop or abstract everyday gestures so they are not simply daily world movements.

An improvisational theatre concept from Rhizome Lee's Subbody. Lee proposed three roles: (1) Initiator; (2) Promoter; (3) Follower.

First, there is an initiator in a performance. This initiator takes on a certain unique qualia. Second, a promoter resonates with the qualia of the initiator and emboldens the qualia further so that–Third–the general followers are more likely to resonate with the qualia.

In other words, the initiator is always the pioneer. The promotor is the one who forms the dance into a duet. Anybody else who attaches after this is a follower and converted the performance into a group (3 or more people).

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.

Japanese term used by Rhizome Lee of Subbody that represents an edge, shadow, or bottom body.

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 practice of snorting the life around you into one nostril to get let the high on life sensation move the body.

A Shadowbody term denoting strings that move the dancer in only one direction depending on where the string is. This is the typical way in which to view a string, as opposed to non-linear strings.

The concept that in butoh, the face can take on a mask, but this mask is one's own face that can transform into the mask.

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.

A Shadowbody term when select terms from an already existing butoh-fu are replaced with others.

A Shadowbody exercise where the body is composed of only marbles inside. What happens? How does this make you move?

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.

A Shadowbody practice where if we have a psychological reaction to a failure of any type, that psychological reaction is an inspiration for a new dance.

Example: In trying to resonate with something, one gets a reaction of aversion, then one dances the feeling of aversion.

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.

A known dance term where the dance is following exactly with the music. In butoh, this is generally to be avoided and to instead view the music as another variable in the environment or another dance partner.

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.

In Shadowbody, this is an exercise to be done in front of a mirror in the dark with one candle. One is to focus on one’s face for a long while (30 minutes or more), and see the various personalities that come about. Many may be scary, absurd, or aged. They can potentially be useful for finding butoh characters.

Important dance concept of copying another dancer.

In Shadowbody, there can be endless types of mirroring if we can modify the mirror as warped or manipulated in some way.

A Shadowbody form of body pun that is simply in motion. A movement pun is when one movement changes contexts, e.g. the moving arm gestures for what shifting into the moving arm gestures for prayer or orans.

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.

A Shadowbody term inspired by the term multiplicity used in the work of Deleuze and Guattari.

Simply means viewing the body as a constantly shifting multiple. Whether the elements are pores, cells, or micro facial expressions, the idea is to see them all as distinct dancers. In other words, we are seeing all the intriguing trees in the forest instead of “just a forest.” We are seeing both the parts and the gestalt (whole).

In Tatsumi Hijikata’s butoh score Quiet House, he called this concept the nest(nest body, nest eyes, etc.).

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 Tatsumi Hijikata term which appears to hint at the concept of the multiplicity body.

The term multiplicity is used in the work of Deleuze and Guattari.

Simply means viewing the body as a constantly shifting multiple. Whether the elements are pores, cells, or micro facial expressions, the idea is to see them all as distinct dancers. In other words, we are seeing all the intriguing trees in the forest instead of “just a forest.” We are seeing both the parts and the gestalt (whole).

In Tatsumi Hijikata’s butoh score Quiet House, he called this concept the nest(nest body, nest eyes, etc.).

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 Shadowbody term denoting strings that pull but endlessly break from their linearity. There is a general direction, but getting there is nonlinear.

A non-linear string/line is a deterritorialized line, a line that is fermented, a line that has lost its way, but still has a beginning and end. This line is a line that has embraced the scribble. non-linear strings.

Shadowbody exercise where the dancer tries very hard to find areas that they have been hiding from. If the dancer finds them yet still cannot move them, they can move around them and over time, they will get closer and closer to the target. This exercise can be taken further by having someone possess the movement wand which will be a flower or weed which they can touch to any part of the body that they feel is being ignored. Whichever part of the body is touched is to be danced.

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.

Concept is inspired by butoh artist Coco Villarreal's workshops where objects or props are a tremendous tool for instigating a reduced body in butoh.

For instance, if the object we are to use is a box that one is to get inside, there will be a reduction of space. We dance despite the reduction and find new discoveries. The same can apply for any object limitation such as being bound in different ways or having one's senses modified in some way.

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, an exercise where participants straighten out their body with arms raised and roll together in a row on the floor (similar to log rolls) with a water qualia flow. The participant at one end will glide over the participants like a drifting body or surfer till reaching the end, and the next participant at the end will continue.

A Shadowbody exercise. The participant disco dances while in strange or difficult positions such as on all fours or bridge, handstand against the wall, or while hugging a tree with all four limbs.

A Body Weather term describing way of training the body so that awareness and movement do not originate from a single fixed center (like the head, chest, or pelvis), but instead from any and every point of the body simultaneously.

A universal open arms gesture of prayer. In the Shadowbody dance method of Theokinesis, the gesture is used as one of the starting places for butoh work.

A Shadowbody floor exercise where the floor has paint (pick a color) and the participant want to get this paint to reach every part of your body so one must roll accordingly.

A Shadowbody exercise where one participant manipulates a sheet of paper. Another participate mirrors the exact manipulates of the paper. If, for instance, the paper is put into a ball, the mirroring participant goes into a ball.

A very common exercise in other dance circles and physical theatre.

In Shadowbody, with one blindfolded participant, another manipulates the body of another in whichever way that resonates. The leader/puppet master choses the resistance of the blindfolded participant (0% to 100%). After, the blindfolded participant attempts to remember the manipulations and reenacts them.

This is a Shadowbody mirroring exercise in a circle. One individual turns into a monster and passes this monster shape and feel around a circle. Once the monster is passed, the passer returns to a neutral state. We try to get the demon rotating around as quickly as possible. Mirroring the sound is also recommended.

At Subbody, stands for a surprise in performance. Inspired by a story of Tatsumi Hijikata being surprised by finding a peacock in his neighbor's residence.

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.

In Shadowbody, this is the exploration of beauty and ugliness in the face inspired by the subreddit where girls submit what they deem is one attractive photo and one not attractive one. Some resulting transformations are impressive. Find your most beautiful face, followed by the most ugly.

In Shadowbody, this is a prop metamorphosis exercise where person A gives a prop in one context to Person B but Person B has a different context for it.

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

This is a Theokinesis butoh exercise inspired by the sect of Christianity known as the Quakers who engage in a practice in church where everyone sits and does not say a word unless something absolutely necessary has to be said (as if from the holy spirit itself).

This idea is enacted butoh style. The participants can stand in a circle and everything is kept silent. Anybody can communicate in some way utilizing the body, but only if they feel it is absolutely necessary.

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.

In Shadowbody, a multi-qualia scenery of which a subbody (one person) or cobody (multiple bodies) is to fill.

For instance, if we are to open up a camp fire scenery with cobody, then one or more individuals are the logs, another the fire, and another the smoke.

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.

A Subbody term where the bugs from Tatsumi Hijikata's Bugs Crawlare replaced with another qualia. The activity is engaged during a slow walk.

In Shadowbody, this is an exercise in bug resonance by finding a real bug to put literally on the body or following it closely.

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.

Butoh carries an enormous affiliation with the body that is in some way reduced or compromised yet made to dance regardless.

The following are major manifestations of the reduced body: (1) drunk; (2) drugged; (3) sick; (4) sleepy; (5) old; (6) maddened.

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.

This is a Shadowbody exercise for those who have worked together over a period of time. In a circle, any participant comes in for one or two minutes, and it is the duty of anybody from the surrounding circle to call out a reduction or regeneration of whatever movement tendency the individual keeps coming back to. This is an exercise in noticing habits.

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.

In Subbody, this is a frozen, solid glare that for some may even be terrifying, bringing back the archetype perhaps of the big eye in the sky that judges you or sees your every move.

A Subbody term used to describe a space or stage position of bodies that looks more random or chaotic, and appears to further approach the appearance of nature.

The contrasting term to this is the city park.

A popular exercise in various dance circles. The participants align themselves into a row of rolling logs on the ground. The log at the end of the row is to quickly get up and get to the other end of the row and continue rolling. This repeats.

In Shadowbody, this is a synesthetic tongue exercise where one tastes the space. the visual or even auditory. One stick their tongue out to taste the room. What does the taste provoke in the body? That is the dance.

A rotten eye term where the eyes are dysfunctional and moving in random directions as if it were taken over by bugs. This is a very good example of a nearly completely reduced or deterritorializedeye.

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."

Sabi is a term in Japanese aesthetics that denotes the beauty of the aged or even the ugly. One can even think rusty. Ankoku Butoh inherently often has this aesthetic at play.

To Horst Hammitzsche (writer of Zen in the Art of Tea Ceremony), “The concept sabi carries not only the meaning ‘aged’—in the sense of ‘ripe with experience and insight’ as well as ‘infused with the patina that lends old things their beauty’—but also that of tranquility, aloneness, deep solitude.”

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 Subbody term for a specific process of entering for butoh creation.

Sen means “fresh,” “novel,” “new,” and/or “interesting.” Feel any strange or new subtle tendencies by moving in any various unique/twisted way. This is form to essence, or form provoking essence.

Shin means “deep.” Simply feel any new feelings that are connected to our depths or deep childhood memories, and may often be an or edge, trigger, or kan.

Hitsu means “necessary.” Go into any of the depths, but only to what seems necessary. If we go in too quick, we may do ourselves a disservice.

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.

A form of the weakened body (Japanese: suijakutai) which is a key concept in Tatsumi Hijikata’s Ankoku Butoh technique that refers to a deliberate physical state where the dancer’s body is intentionally loosened, deformed, or weakened to express vulnerability, decay, and transformation. Rather than showcasing muscular strength or classical dance precision, the weakened body embraces imperfection, fragility, and a sense of exhaustion or collapse.

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

In Shadowbody and in Ken Mai classes, an exercise where participants clump together and slowly strike at each other while at the same time blocking each other.

Refers to a physical theatre exercise engaged at Shadowbody where everyone moves throughout a space while at the same time keeping equal distance.

In Shadowbody, an exercise where participants clump together without touching. As everybody moves in the space, all the arms spread out try and touch only the empty spaces.

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.

A Shadowbody term expanding the concept of Noguchi taiso circles.

The concept involves putting into a square any rounding or figure-8 movement done in the body, so the body goes into linear directions. The rest of the body has to follow in the passive Noguchi Taiso water dynamic way.

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.

Strings are at the very foundation of much butoh practice due to the motif of being moved by something (like a puppet master).

Strings can be thought of both in the literal and figurative sense. A string can literally move you, but any qualia an also serve as the puppet master that attaches strings to somebody.

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

A key concept meaning the weakened body in Tatsumi Hijikata’s Ankoku Butoh technique that refers to a deliberate physical state where the dancer’s body is intentionally loosened, deformed, or weakened to express vulnerability, decay, and transformation. Rather than showcasing muscular strength or classical dance precision, the weakened body embraces imperfection, fragility, and a sense of exhaustion or collapse.

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 can decrease or increase in intensity can 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.

Pronounced pronounced tah-meh.

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).

Used often at Subbody. It is way in which to connect cobodies utilizing thread.

Thread is connected among a group, crafting a haphazard web. Nobody is to break the thread.

In Shadowbody, eventually the thread is taken away, yet the movements continue as if the thread was still there.

In Shadowbody, this is a type of eye that thunders. To engage, first one is to look side to side then pick up the speed till one reaches a vibration/tremble effect with the eyes.

In Shadowbody, this tongue exercise/world where the tongue becomes the food.

A shadowbody exercise where the tongue is the controller of all the body’s movements. One feels, for instance, that the tongue is the character inside a mecha (large robots).

In Shadowbody, this is a tongue exercise of rolling the tongue in endless ways, inside and outside the mouth.

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.

Any of the deterritorialized eyes above can result in traveling eyes. Yoko Ashikawa proposed eyes to travel beyond the front of our skull, but to the “crotch, back, and so on,” and further still beyond the body.

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.

A Shadowbody portmanteau play on words combing "rigor mortis" and "vigor." It means the invigorating dance arising after one has already surrendered and died reached a broken down state.

An example of this related to a Coco Villlarreal class where one is taken to the edge, exhausted, and broken in order to dance the transformation that follows.

A Shadowbody exercise where the body becomes nothing but vines that travel the space. Vines take over the arms and fingers, and grow out of different parts of the body. There is also a lust to take over a wall or surface.

This is the typical, daily world social or behavioral stratum of which is a starting place for deterritorialization or reduction & regeneration.

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.

A key concept weakened body (in Japanese: suijakutai) in Tatsumi Hijikata’s Ankoku Butoh technique that refers to a deliberate physical state where the dancer’s body is intentionally loosened, deformed, or weakened to express vulnerability, decay, and transformation. Rather than showcasing muscular strength or classical dance precision, the weakened body embraces imperfection, fragility, and a sense of exhaustion or collapse.

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.

In performance, when only white is seen in the eye. To achieve this eye, the eyelids are relaxed and the pupils look up to hide the pupils under the eyelid.

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

Means simply traveling from one embodied qualia to another. World changes are vital in butoh as it gives a semblance of progression or narrative.

In Shadowbody, this identity/equality statement refers to the many such forms which were used at Subbody: tree = rhizome, subbody = cobody.

In Shadowbody, there is death = nurture, body = art.

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