The final performance of a man who turned human bodies into screaming poetry.
Ankoku Butoh is a style of avant-garde dance that established itself in the counter culture experimental arts scene of post WWII Japan. The dance form is thought to have been founded by Tatsumi Hijikata, who both created and performed in butoh pieces from the late 1950’s - through the early 1970’s. In butoh, the style of movement is extremely stylized and deliberate, vacillating between slow and sharp, expressing feelings of dread, sexualization, violence, calmness, birth and “creatureness” among other things. This performance of Summer Storm was originally recorded in 1973 at Westside Auditorium, Kyoto University, Japan, and was Hijikata’s last public performance before his death in 1986 with Butoh of Dark Spirit School. Video version produced in 2003.
Direction
Arai's camera respects the slowness—no cheap cuts.
Acting
Hijikata's final physical testament, body as shattered monument.
Director
Misao Arai
Trivia, insights & behind the scenes
Butoh emerged from post-Hiroshima Japan as an artistic response to national trauma—bodies made alien to process the unprocessable.
Hijikata banned most documentation of his work; this 1973 recording exists because a student smuggled in equipment. He never authorized its release.
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