A solitary dance Hijikata Tatsumi's «ankoku butō», a somatic perspective on culture and performance

A solitary dance Hijikata Tatsumi's «ankoku butō», a somatic perspective on culture and performance by Margherita De Giorgi In 1968, at the edge of his celebrity in the Japanese art scene, Hijikata Tatsumi reached a crucial point in his career as performer and choreographer. In the past nine years he had been leading research on bodily expression, together with Ōno Kazuo and young disciples, which he then called Dance of Darkness (ankoku butō). In doing so, he defined the core of his experimentations and ideological values, whose background consisted in earlier investigations through Euro-american body-languages, culture and some contemporary Japanese strains1. Later on, in the 1970's, Hijikata's concern would be explicitly devoted to the re-construction of (bodily) native tradition, as the expression Tōhoku Kabuki suggests, through his own synaesthetic dance notation (butō fu). Nevertheless, the relationship between Japanese intercultural context and the construction of Hijikata's body-self2, under «Western» and native influences, is more complex and not yet completely understood. It laid implicit, or more subtle, effecting his somatic discourse even before the name of his dance would refer to it. In fact, the ideological and physiological liveness of ankoku butō lies in a complex reference system. It can be traced in the relation between logic structures, economics, cultural conservatism and the libidinal stride which attempts and de-constructs them, differentiating an individual's factual life experience from any other's. Such relationship is not quite a conflict between opposites but, as process of embodiment, rather a mutual shifting between ideas and phenomena. We are consequently able to underline two issues, nourishing a common theoretical impasse on butō's cultural features. Both of them demand the adjustment to different perspectives, questioning the Euro-american one on the concept of avant-garde and, more specifically, the Cartesian one over the body, where physiology and mind (or soul) are separated (De Giorgi 2012: 35-73). Therefore we may proceed by recapitulating how Hijikata's art emerged from the Japanese avant-garde context but eventually did not endorse the same purposes. Such a viewpoint involves Hijikata's subversive goals in intercultural and political dynamics which, for the first time in postwar Performing Arts, are methodically entrenched in a severe training of 1 2 These years were the most fertile in Hijikata's entire artistic path; his aesthetical patterns emerged from the struggle between bodily frustration and a disciplined attitude in choreographing, which would later shape his own form of butō. See Centonze (2010), De Giorgi (2012: 20-24), Aslan and Picon-Vallin (2002). This concept was firstly applied in the Medical Anthropology field and described as the «individual body, understood in the phenomenological sense [ ] the constituent parts of the body mind, matter, psyche, soul, self etc. and their relations to each other, and the ways in which the body is received and experienced in health and sickness are, of course, highly variable» (SheperHughes and Lock 1987: 7). 1

somatic consciousness3. This fundamental trait of his artistic mission ought to be highlighted from the start, as it introduces a radical phenomenological approach to the dancing body. 1. Hijikata Tatsumi and Ōno Kazuo performing Bara Iro Dance (1965). During this phase of their research, Western body-languages were often quoted or de-constructed In the Japanese expression for Dance of Darkness, ankoku is combined to the Chinese characters indicating native forms of dance (butō). Denoting more than aesthetics, it is used as a practical discernment from traditional codes and techniques; although it is placed in, and constitutes, the core of a broader, more layered perspective on performance and politics, it basically points a material for the dance and not simply the subject of it. Ankoku consists of the impulsive or libidinal drive by which the flesh (nikutai) expresses its liveliness. In his work, Hijikata showed a deep awareness of how such factor both traces and enhances physiological issues, as well as postural patterns. We currently know that postures and movements enact inner transformations alike; also, these changes are not merely psychological, but involve the basic organization of impulses and responses to the outer world (Hanna 1988). As it occurs in the German Ausdruckstanz (Expressionist dance, Hijikata's technical 3 To outline Somatics we refer to Thomas Hanna, the author of this conception between 1970's and 1980's: «What physiologists see from their externalized, third-person view is always a "body." What the individual sees from his or her internalized, first-person view is always a "soma". Soma is a Greek word that, from Hesiod onward, has meant "living body". This living, self-sensing, internalized perception of oneself is radically different from the externalized perception of what we call a "body", which could just as well be a human, a statue, a dummy, or a cadaver [ ] all human beings are self-aware, self-sensing, and self-moving: they are self-responsible somas. The somatic viewpoint recognizes not only that human beings are bodily beings who can become victims of physical and organic forces, but also that they are equally somatic beings who can change themselves» (Hanna 1988: 18, 20, 21, passim). 2

background), the development of any poetic issue is expected to influence an atmosphere, movements or gestures, but it doesn't directly grant a questioning of the spontaneous behavior of the body. On the contrary, the emerging «darkness» in this form of dance produces the movement and might be considered movement itself. As a result of physical training, such an inner physiological process is artificially shaped by a choreographic frame, not simply in his geometrical appearance, but as a result of precise (yet not always fixed) synaesthetical conditions. Ankoku butō may be considered as dance, then, insofar as it consists in the conscious enactment of one's own latent processes, where body and psyche are but functional poles of a whole physical entity. 2. Hijikata Tatsumi and Ōno Kazuo during a dance sequence in Bara Iro Dance (1965) Awareness produces an empowerment of intensity to these patterns, through movement or a peculiar quality of ostensible stillness, and also grants their exploitation for aesthetical practice, as well as their finishing through rehearsals. This stance enlightens a common ground with Somatic Disciplines, such as Alexander technique, Feldenkrais method and Body-Mind Centering4, which are by now largely adopted by dancers and performers not only in their training, but even as a poetic source. 4 Frederick Matthias Alexander, Moshe Feldenkrais and Bonnie Bainbridge Cohen are the founders of these practices, among the most renowned in the Somatics field. More than playing a terapeutic role, practitioners underline their concern with re-educating selfperception through movement and touch. Consequently all disciplines involve a deep questioning of «Western» medical and physiological knowledge through an experimental approach, as well as incorporating practical and theoretical basis from other cultures and body-cultures, such as Asian martial arts and yoga. 3

3-4. Hijikata performing his masterpiece, Hijikata Tatsumi to nihonjin. Nikutai no hanran, also known as The Rebellion of the Flesh (1968) All of these practices, as well as (contemporary) butō, can be understood and correctly experienced by shifting our viewpoint, from the body as an object, to the soma as a result of multiple processes. Hence we understand how physiology and body-images 5 may produce a corpo-reality6 and therefore, in our topic, an unusual attitude on stage. Yet, allowing the expression of oneself's ankoku, or letting it «go», is not quite dancing it: this is precisely what the Dance of Darkness seems to state in opposition to previous researches, significantly collected in performance events the artist named 650 Experiences Recital (Centonze 2010: 113). In other words, there is a moment in Hijikata's artistic path in which nikutai is the aim of the dance (recalling Katja Centonze, 2002: 155), or an object to be obtained through intense bodily experimentations. This happens through the use of synaesthetic patterns (butō fu), activating sensory 5 6 «Body image refers to the collective and idiosyncratic representations an individual entertains about the body in its relationship to the environment, including internal and external perceptions, memories, affects, cognitions, and actions» (Sheper-Hughes and Lock 1987: 16). As we have just suggested, in our perspective this conception is integrated to the physical behavior of the soma itself. Kuniyoshi Kazuko underlines how the sense of loss and the struggle for completeness was one of the deepest concerns in Hijikata and Ōno's collaborations (Kuniyoshi in Aslan e Picon-Vallin 2002: 112-118, 126). The erotic value of this struggle would be the most powerful drive for the physical movement; it is then possible to estimate the relationship between the two artists as «transfert» process. On the other hand, from this perspective, the very activation of somatic patterns (into a peculiar quality of postures, gestures and stage presence) through the embodiment of butō fu can be defined as a process of inner transfert, manifesting itself throughout the butoka's body during the performance (De Giorgi 2012: 24-26, 94-95, 118, passim). The term transfert is used to indicate a certain quality of physiological dynamics, involving imagery projections, and does not involve a psychoanalytical approach. 4

system and bodily memory, which are methodically composed in order to affect the quality of movement and stage presence. In these terms, bodily practice converges to what we call «dance», both quoting and detaching from classical Japanese and Euro-american traditions (De Giorgi 2012). 5. B. B. Cohen exploring movement during a Body-Mind Centering session (1991, on the left); 6. M. Feldenkrais working with a child (1981, on the right) Secondly another phase occurs yet not in a structured way until the second half of the 1960s. Here, nikutai becomes the instrument of the dance as a result of previous training, though it never loses his «anarchist» essence (Centonze 2002, 2010). Therefore the butoka is asked to embody the «dark» impulses, while a psycho-physical surveillance or frame holds their emerging visible movements. This layer of the dance inhabits both the dancing shintai («theoretic» body) and the spectator's experience (Centonze 2002, 2010; De Giorgi 2012). It is worth noting that, at least during the first half of the 1960s, the concept of «darkness» or «obscurity» was applied to the terms denoting both outer and native forms of dance, buyō and butō. Hijikata's choices in language underline how a cultural milieu affects the choreographic discourse in its primary, physical appearance, «before» any content may be consciously organised. The name points at a symbolic macrocosmos, while corporeality exposes a microcosmos, where the attempt to re-write 5

individual experience through movement is marked, or carved 7. At the same time, the necessity to frame the «obscurity» between two different semantic constructs reveals two sides of Hijikata's subversion of bodily codes. The first involves the roots of the dark impulses themselves, lying beneath (but informed by) cultural conflicts and/or contaminations. These are trained as individual sources for the dance by being driven and then shaped into peculiar senso-motoric patterns, which are liable to be repeated and yet constantly variating. 7. Hijikata Tatsumi performing Gibasan (1972) The second unveils the symbolic structures of cultural practices themselves: where a symbol occurs, a process lies beneath it, which the libidic drive (or desire) attempts to rephrase, while being impressed by it at the same time. Therefore, the ignition of this «obscure matter» throughout the body and the 7 Scheper-Hughes and Lock use the same concepts referring to «representations of holism in non-western epistemologies». The authors recognize «a conception of harmonious wholes in which everything from the cosmos to the individual organs of the human body are understood as a single unit», while a second one focuses on complementary dualities, «in which the relationship of parts to the whole is emphasized» (Sheper-Hughes and Lock 1987: 12). Hijikata's entire path cannot simply be summed up by one of these systems, but it is certainly possible to find several affinities to both of them, respectively in the Tohōku Kabuki and in the ankoku butō periods (1969 1986 and 1959 1968). Nevertheless, all distinctions referring to Hijikata's training methods and aesthetics ought to be considered as functional to a synthesis and not absolute, since our thesis aims to manifest in the first place the persisting core of the artist's bodily practice through time. 6

organization of the sensory impulses through imagery, perceptions, memories and emotions by the butō fu are not mere aesthetic devices. They operate a step forward in a process of emancipation from body-culture and body-politics (Centonze 2010: 112; Scheper-Hughes and Lock 1987: 7) instead of «exhausting» soma's subversive potential in legitimated languages. From this point we may focus on Hijikata's relation to the basic statements of the postwar avant-garde. Although it is true that most part of such artistic strains served the cause of national independence from American politics and economic influence, their ideological and aesthetical frame was already marked by «Western» traits (De Giorgi 2012: 47-52, passim). On the contrary, Hijikata's aim eventually was not to realize an integration of Japanese and «Western» bodily languages, but to wear any passive contamination out of his body-self. Since cultural emancipation was an attitude to be nourished by one's own bodily awareness, the artist elaborated a somatic method to train it. Yet ankoku butō never lost aesthetical aims: theatricality was the frame which allowed Hijikata's ideological ground to objectify itself into a communicable discourse, both to disciples and audience. On the other hand, we can trace his early concern with Japanese social, political and cultural matters mostly regarding well-legitimated practices and moral values by the later part of 1950s, when he appeared to be more concerned with «Western» languages. In fact, Euro-american culture was valued as a symbolic practice to be experienced and revolted through physical training; later on this perspective led to the attempt of re-constructing a shared bodily tradition, in the Tohōku Kabuki (Kuniyoshi in Aslan and Picon-Vallin 2002: 112-118, 134). Corporeality is right where language keeps its grip, where common habits and extra-ordinary behaviors, as well as models of transgression, are physically impressed. As a consequence, we understand that ankoku butō as a (cultural) practice involves the rejection of dialectical structure and of the concept of progress, as ideological statements and phenomena referring to linear time. Such «Western» cultural features had become a primary reference for the dominant culture and counter-culture alike: the assumption of the language of power was the only chance to be leading in, or heard by, the international scene. This seems to be true even when, as for the majority of the avant-garde experiences, there took place an attempt to overturn mainstream values (De Giorgi 2012). The reason why Hijikata was so concerned with a rebellion against political, social and moral values through a «criminal» body practice lies in his refusal to adhere to capitalistic «Western» colonization. Whenever an involvement with its aesthetical features occurred, so did the fundamental embedding of its principles, which unconsciously had become a main way for Japanese society to understand and to 7

assert itself8. For instance, as Actionism aimed, art should «pervert» all traditional categories and invade ordinary social life (Gossot 2007); nonewithstanding such a strong stance, the theoretical patterns this movement adopted were explicitly Euro-american and therefore didn't question the legitimation of the very counter-culture foundations. On the contrary, ankoku butō and Hijikata's late researches detach from these attitudes toward power, as well as they reject the intent of destroying art as an extra-ordinary language; in fact, stage was used to underline and define the bodily outburst of the dance (De Giorgi 2012: 52-53, 72-73). Hijikata's concern over settings and black-box theaters in most part of his production, along with his later voluntary isolation from the Society of Spectacle, confirms this essential difference. 8. Hijikata Tatsumi performing in Hosotan (1972). As it has been underlined before, a transdisciplinary matrix in ankoku butō cannot be denied, as well as its intention of crossing cultural boundaries (Centonze 2010: 113); they hail from Hijikata's Dance Experiences, which were more attached to counter-culture performance and visual arts. Nevertheless, they are used as the instrument for the Dance of Darkness, not as its aim, and these are always due to 8 Both Western and Japanese researches on this phenomenon ought to be valued by their own cultural background, which are involved in a complex relation of mirroring and détournement. Categories as «body» and «avant-garde» assume therefore shades and meanings whose differences are subtle, yet fundamental to unveil ethnocentric perspectives (Centonze 2010; Thomas Hackner in Centonze, 2010). While the orientalistic viewpoint over Japanese art still endures, other dynamics were underlined in recent Italian studies, such as those of Occidentalism and Self-Orientalism (Mazzei in Pasquinelli 2005; Miyake 2010). A short overview of their relations to ankoku butō and avant-garde art can also be found in De Giorgi (2012: 40-53). 8

some kind of deconstruction more than juxtaposition. In Ghilardi's studies, ankoku butō is therefore considered as a deep expression of Japanese thought and sensitivity on art and performance. It is pointed to as the reincarnation of the deepest traces of tradition, or founded on a paradoxical form of kata which endorses the responsibility a renewed tradition, over a profound cultural rift called modernization (Ghilardi 2011: 174). Yet we find more effective its significance among the arts «which leave traces» those which «produce a becoming real» of any support, any cultural element, any trace. «More than a definition of foundations or contents, it is this constant attention to the radical embodiment of imagery» which gives shape, as it did in the first instance, to its innumerable shades and variations (Doganis 2010: 102)9. According to this perspective it is eventually possible to clarify our original thesis: ankoku butō is not a conclusive aesthetical statement in Hijikata's work. It consists in the methodical core of his practice, persisting and yet transforming itself through the subsequent phases of his research, as his body did. It does not share the same commitment of the «Western» avant-garde, often marked by a stable manifesto. Its relation to writing is rather an aesthetical symbiosis and it got more and more akin to a «secret» oral transmission from master to disciple, even close to an initiation (Doganis 2010: 103-104). Hijikata's aesthetics basically avoided submission to fixed language and ideology. Firstly, in the 1960s, this «escape» occurred through a complex shift of terms and definitions (De Giorgi 2012: 20-26). When his system got more stable through his dance notation, along with Hijikata's concern with the Kabuki Tōhoku, it also changed its theoretical references and confirmed the relevance of the spoken word over the written. Consequently, the Dance of Darkness cannot be interpreted as a direct attempt at intercultural integration (or colonization), as an Euro-american (ethnocentric) perspective would lead to believe 10. Hijikata's aim rather consisted in a reaction and friction to those patterns which dominant cultures were imposing as expressions of their power. Its «Western» references were actually modern and they exhibit a typical form of struggle between individual and society. Nevertheless, compared to other modernist body-languages, its practice essentially reaches a different level in the exploration of corporeality, where liveliness shows its ultimate impurity. Its ideological marginalism detaches itself from a cultural mainstream, where absolute references had shown the symptoms of their failure. 9 Italian translation from the French by Bianca Maurmayr; English translation by Margherita De Giorgi. 10 Yet it is interesting to underline how its bodily method(s) would be received, understood and applied although sometimes confused with Ōno's poetics by new generations of performance artists worldwide, as a way to question identity relating it to intercultural dynamics. See Centonze (2005, 2004), De Giorgi (2012) and Rousier (2009). 9

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