Butoh Dictionary

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.

An important concept in Shadowbody originally coined by the theatre director Peter Brook. Refers to the actor’s paradoxical state on stage: at once fully present as themselves (a living human being) and simultaneously absent, giving way to the character, story, or theatrical truth being performed.

In the context of Shadowbody, the ability to be in this double resonance allows for the butoh dancer to either enter deeply or immediately exit any situation.

The concept such as Waguri's coolness or Yukio Makami's not drunk relates to a true trance where one doesn't lose one's own awareness of what one is doing, but always remains in control despite how chaotically or deeply one enters.

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.