Butoh Dictionary

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.