The Horror, The Horror

Although it's Valentine's Day, I've spent most of this watching some pretty disturbing Butoh dance videos on YouTube after stumbling across Frauke on Fashion Installation.

Originating in post-war Japan, Butoh dance performances involve "playful and grotesque imagery, taboo topics, extreme or absurd environments, and is traditionally performed in white body makeup with slow hyper-controlled motion, with or without an audience." (wikipedia) 

Kazuo Ohno

Sankai Juku. These guys are my favourite and by the looks of things, the most well known contemporary group. Check out more of their work on You Tube. Most of the embedding options were disabled.


Traditional Butoh from one of the Masters


More contemporary versions. "LuLu" is NSFW.