On Sunday, April 3rd, 2016 I visited Triskelion Arts to see "7643", a collaboration between the Butoh artist Vangeline and the prolific contortionist Jonathan Nosan. Before giving my take upon the evening I think it necessary to define "what" Butoh is. A cursory Google search tells us that Butoh is an avant garde performance art with origins in Japan that allows the body to "speak" for itself, through unconsciously improvised movement. In my experience, Butoh manifests itself as a set of therapeutic exercises that reveal more to the practitioner than they do to the audience.
As executed by Vangeline (who defines her work as rooted in Japanese Butoh while carrying it into the future), Butoh enhances commonplace moments riddled throughout a framework of ornate scenarios. Working from a script of staged tableaux that explore the lengths to which an abject man will go to win over an indifferent woman, I would say that "7643" certainly fulfills this mission. I have never seen Butoh executed in a theatrical setting and though a traditional play or ballet might dispatch this entire evening of events in a matter of minutes, I don't think that it would have plumbed the emotional depths quite as movingly. Therein lies the "magic" of experiencing this unconventional dance form. Usually we can rely upon dance to explore movement and ideas through space in time to music. With Butoh, one does not see a great range of physical movement, rather one feels a great deal of internal movement that seems to pierce miles of metaphysical and psychic space. Bear in mind that any payoff to be had, even on this evening, requires a great deal of patience for the uninitiated. Again, what might be conveyed in a written paragraph comprised the breadth of this evening. Thank goodness then for this collaboration, especially for those not accustomed to watching vast stretches of stillness. With Jonathan Nosan, whose contortion seemed to take on additional layers of extremity through his emotional exertions, we had a man who quite literally bent over backwards and walked over his own hands to reach the woman that he desired. It was not much in the way of dance vocabulary but then, as executed here, its simplicity offered deep nuance, and of course the "freak factor" was a marvel to behold.Photo Credit: Eva Mueller
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