Dark dance
Eros, illness and the sacred
This is the recording of the talk I gave on butō and antinomian dance after Nietzsche, presented at the Occulture Conference in Berlin in 2023.
Ankoku butō – dark dance – belongs to the antinomian current of dance (or anti-dance, as it has been called) that descends from Nietzsche’s philosophy. I begin by considering dance after Nietzsche – tracing the return of the archaic gods in Isadora Duncan’s unrestricted Hellenism and Nijinsky’s Faun and Rite of Spring, to the ecstatic dances of Mary Wigman and Anita Berber’s provocative eroticism.
With butō’s first steps in the postwar Japanese underground, Hijikata Tatsumi initiated a radical reappraisal of the body, drawing inspiration from this western anti-tradition and from his upbringing in the remote region of Tōhoku, inhabited by rice farmers and kami. Through his dances and writings, a convergence of eros, illness and the sacred emerges, themes which obsess and inform my own dance practice.
Great presentation, Alkistis, absolutely loved it! Love to see you write a book about dance, can't think of anyone else better suited to write a book on the topic than you (by the way my father legally changed his last name to Dancer, it was his biggest passion, even though he had no official training). The Brazen Vessel is my favorite book of the 21st century and half the credit is yours, being that you of course wrote half of it.
Seeing your presentation also made me fondly remember going to the Hijikatu Tatsumi exhibit here in Los Angeles a few years ago, with many of the photos you shared in your presentation, and also videos and other works of art and items related to him.