Existence

Things do not need to be physically present in order to be actually present — one can speak them and call them into being. Any poet knows that. Words describe, remember, and reproduce lived experience, while also shaping and creatively creating it. Words hold things in their spaces; they arrange them, making room in the mind for what comes to the human encounter. Although the content of words changes — a flower becomes earth — the word “flower” keeps the same shape, the same space, for the next physical flower to be described or evoked. Words, even verbs, are ways of keeping change at bay; by their very form, they have a static nature (except for onomatopoeias).

Dance, by contrast, embraces the fact that all is change. Butoh, however, is special, for it is a dance about existence; and for that matter, it is a very poetic (and so linguistic) dance. 

I see existence as something solid — something that has ground, weight, importance. Just as words are cut from the undifferentiated stream of sound, existence is cut from the constantly flowing river of change.

Or perhaps existence is the soul of change: while a bird changes every second, like you and me, we still say that it — and we — exist.

The word “existence” comes from Latin, meaning to stand out, to stand forth, to take a stand, to emerge, to appear.

In butoh, a form emerges from the constant change that is our bodies ("water bags," if you wish) and comes to stand between the earth and the sky — and so it has weight, importance, and presence. The audience finds this emergence magnetic, and I find something divine in this process.

The divine — the unchanging and eternal — comes into being out of change and stands out from the ground of reality, much like words.

[Photo above by Vanessa Martins @parpadoscansados]