I was first introduced to Butoh when Sonny, who wrote arts reviews for the mainstream Straits Times gave me a free ticket to a Butoh performance during one of the Singapore Arts Festivals. I no longer remember the name of the troupe but I remember the impact it had on me. Although the majority of the audience was alienated and perhaps disturbed by that performance, I was so struck by it, especially the finale, where the birth of baby was enacted with such a simmering slow and excruciating intensity that it’s fair to say that my lifetime love of butoh began at that instant – it was love at first sight.

I see butoh as a dance of darkness. It perverts and inverts the aesthetic standard by turning the grotesque, wretched and awful into the sublime, transcendent and beautiful. Despite the madness and absurdity (at times abject and empty and at other times humorous) in the butoh performances I’ve seen, there is also a painful and heart wrenching search for grace, redemption and salvation.

Perhaps you can get a taste of what Butoh is in the videos below.

This video is an useful introduction to Butoh.

Butoh: Body on the Edge of Crisis

Edin Valez’s Dance of Darkness