Butoh Dictionary

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."