Butoh is a Japanese avant-garde dance developed by Tetsumi Hijikata around 1960. In the words of Japanese dance critic Kozuko Kuniyoshi: “Butoh is not only performance, but also the embodiment of one of the most precise critical spirits in the history of the consciousness of the body.”

Butoh has little in common with the symmetrical beauty of conventional dance. It has been described as “a body in crisis” by Vancouver’s butoh dancer Jay Hirabayashi. As the naked, white-painted dancers transit in slow motion from one contorted posture to another, one can recognize in their movements elements of traditional kabuki, ausdrucktanz and grotesque theater.

The images emanating from the dance forms are of the body confronted with universal forces invoking fear, desperation, joy, ecstasy and Zen-like stillness. As Polish theater director Jerzy Grotowski put it, butoh is the exploration of “a very ancient art form where ritual and artistic creation were seamless, where poetry was song, song was incantation and movement was dance.”

—Christopher Grabowski

The pictures on this page were taken in 2002 at the annual Butoh performance on Vancouver's Wreck Beach, by the Kokoro Dance, a butoh dance company led by Barbara Bourget and Jay Hirabayashi.