Butoh Dictionary

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.

A Jerzy Growtowsky voicing term.

Grotwosky went beyond voicing from the throat, lungs, and belly, and encouraged adding all the other parts of the body. He stated that the actor ought to experiment in how to send air to other parts of the body so that those parts can amplify the sound and be a resonator.

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.