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    All comments by BK

    People Are Talking: UMS presents Sankai Juku: UMUSUNA:

  • Everything about the Sankai Juku group displayed unison such as their stark white skin, shaved heads, and matching costumes. All of these details were meant to help the audience from concentrating on the individuals characteristics of the dancers, but instead on the movement of the dancers. However, when it came down to the movement itself, there did not seem to be great cohesion within the group. The slower a dance is, the easier it is to pick up on discrepancies in the flow between performers. Butoh is an extremely slow dance and therefore it was very easy to tell if one person was slightly off from the rest of the group. There were many times in which the dancers had separate roles within their group, but most of the time the group danced as one. At least one dancer was almost always a little bit off during the group parts. I found this interesting because I’d have thought that group would concentrate more on being very cohesive. However, Butoh is also considered an inward to outward dance, where the dancers do not need to be taught the style. It exists within everyone and the dancers are supposed to use previous memories and experiences to release the dance from within them. When considering this, it would make sense for each of the dancers to all have slightly different styles because each dancer is basing their dance off of different memories/experiences.

PERFORMANCES & EVENTS