Wednesday October 5th at 6:30 pm
Rolex Learning Center Forum
by the Globe JINEN Company
Atsushi Takenouchi (dance)
Hiroko Komiya (music)
Butô style was created during the 1960s in Japan. It is the result of a rebellion and expresses the trauma of World War Two. Globe Jinen Company is offering to the EPFL community an authentic, hard-line butô show, faithful to the pioneer movement founded by Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ôno in underground Japan.
On stage, the dancer moves,
Slowly, with poetry and minimalism,
To the rhythmes of the musician’s terran sounds.
He is almost naked and his body is painted white.
Each of his movements matters and is justly measured
Little by little, a profound relation is created with the audience.
The japanese character of butô is made up of two elements :
bu meaning “dance” and tô meaning “hitting the ground”. Impregnated with buddhism and shintô beliefs, butô is a subversive dance which opposes itself to the occidental influence of classical ballet and modern dance but also to the traditional artistic forms of Japan such as the Nô or the Kabuki. It is part of a rupture with the traditional living arts which seem powerless to express new questions.
Globe JINEN Company :
Dancer Atsushi Takenouchi devotes himself to but at age 18 and studies with the movement’s very
founders. Since 1986, he’s practicing his own linen butô and is creating solo shows. Musician
Hiroko Kimiya joins Globe JINEN in 1999. For her musical performances, she mainly uses natural
substances such as water, stones, bamboo, seashells or even metal bowls and bells.