INTENSIVE WORKSHOPS & SEMINAR
INSPIRED BY HIJIKATA TATSUMI
TOKYO, JULY 16–AUGUST 4, 2013

This three-week intensive brought together leading practitioners and scholars to explore the legacy and living practice of Hijikata Tatsumi and ankoku butoh. Through workshops, seminars, and open discussions led by Yukio Waguri, Seisaku, Yuri Nagaoka, Kayo Mikami, and scholars including Bruce Baird, participants investigated Hijikata’s methods as tools for personal discovery, questioning how bodies move, transform, perceive, and relate to space, sensation, and memory.

  • A six-day immersion into butoh movement and notation. Focus on walking practices and transformative states (doll, beast, smoke, flower), exploring the body as medium, nervous and mental movement, crisis, and image-based work, culminating in the creation of a short composition.

  • An eight-day exploration of “emptying the body.” Emphasis on listening, sensory perception, distance, texture, scale, and image (insects, mist, stone, jellyfish, powder). The work aims toward a body moved by its relationship to space rather than intention.

  • A three-day comparative inquiry into Hijikata’s butoh and Noguchi Taiso. Using image-language and physical philosophy, participants explore standing, walking, the ailing/primordial body, tightening vs. release, and “becoming,” integrating insights into an individual practice.

  • An open seminar continuing discussion of Hijikata’s final workshops, featuring talks by former students, movement demonstrations, and audience Q&A.

  • Lecture and Q&A with Bruce Baird, screening of Hitogata (Human Shape), and an open discussion.