Butoh Performance

Rien à casser dans le noir

( Nothing to break in the dark )

- The bric-a-brac of the Universe -

It begins with a funeral.

To whom is there put on the tray, is it the head of Holy Jean demanded to Hérode by Salomé?

Women in black similar to the witches in Macbeth.
One holds an egg, the other a small baby, the third one holds the hand of a child, the fourth one her companion and the last one carries an old man on her back.

Dies are played, the ladies advance on the checkerboard, it is whom will arrive the first, but to reach purpose, it is to find the point of departure.

And did not She, reach purpose?

Where was She moreover?

In Japan, this country of arts matiaux and courtesy or rather not, than we say, country of the pachinko and the karaoke, the manga and the multimedia.

Smells of roasted fish, itinerant salesman's shouts of sweet potatoes, sirens of ambulance, Buddhist prayers in front of the altar in a room of tea, all this at the moment the song of shômyô ( 1 ) intoned with the gong more the Galaxy.

The echo of Hannya Shinkyô ( 2 ) continues to resound until the borders of the Earth not deny the vulgar desires of the laity but to assert such which value of the reality.

 

In the mortiersde the universe, the rabbits are making mochi ( 3 ).

Black raven while drawing signs yin / yang chase Her.

Even reaching Paradise, they must undergo the duties , the works.

Cat canvasser of sobaya ( 4 ), cat licking oil, cat streched neck in the midnight.

Will the magic circle drawn with flowers know how to protect her from the intervention of dohsojin ( 5 )?

The Earth explodes.

Our Earth so beautiful---

Nothing to break in the dark.

(1) Shômyô: songs liturgigues Buddhists ( Shingon) a little bit comparable to the Gregorian chant.

(2) Hannya Shingyô: sutra of the " Perfection of the Big Wisdom " of whom(which) recitation is very fréquènte in temples Buddhists.

(3) Mochi: rice puddings glutineux (image of festive character and auspice).

(4) Sobaya: popular restaurant of noodles.

(5) Dohsojin: ancestral divinities of roads, borders / intersections among alive and dead, male and feminine, which are the object of a cult in companies(societies) villagers.

text by Juju Alishina / 2002

 

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