The London Butoh Festival: Celebrating Fifty Years of Butoh - The Birkbeck Connection September - November 2009

Butoh is a form of movement originated by dance artists Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno in Japan after the Second World War. This approach to movement emerged at a time when many artists in Japan were seeking to escape from the weight of Japanese tradition and the force of westernization that followed World War Two. The butoh founders were seeking a redefinition of Japanese contemporary dance and rejected western ballet and modern dance, although German Expressionist dance was a strong influence on the early butoh founders.

Read more:

In conversation - Maria Koripas and Fran Barbe

The London Butoh Festival and the Birkbeck Connection