Butoh Dictionary
There are currently 8 terms in this directory beginning with the letter I.
Ideokinesis
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.
In terms of butoh, ideokinesis shows just how powerful the perfect image can be in movement.
Igata
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.
Ingesturation
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.
Initiator-Promotor-Follower
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).
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).
Intensity Switch
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 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.
Invisible Butoh
Term inspired by Augusto Boal and Panagiotis Assimakopoulos’s concept of Invisible Theatre where the spectators feel your act is an unstaged, non-performative event.
An example is coming together with other butoh dancers with normal clothes at a restaurant and making a performance out of it, yet blurring the lines between the daily world and the performance world where people do not feel it was staged.
An example is coming together with other butoh dancers with normal clothes at a restaurant and making a performance out of it, yet blurring the lines between the daily world and the performance world where people do not feel it was staged.
Invisible Theatre
A form of performance developed by Augusto Boal in which a rehearsed or improvisational scene is enacted in a public setting without announcing it as theatre, so that bystanders become the unwitting audience. Their original purpose was to provoke reflection and dialogue on social or political issues by blending seamlessly into everyday life.
For butoh, the idea resonates with engaging in butoh in public but also straddling the line between the daily world and the butoh world so people are not aware there is any performance happening at all.
For butoh, the idea resonates with engaging in butoh in public but also straddling the line between the daily world and the butoh world so people are not aware there is any performance happening at all.
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