Dear Butoh afficionados,
Kemelo Anozipho Sehlapelo and bodyhacker (aka Sall Lam Toro) have conjured the black butoh network. We invite you into the first black butoh network gathering to train with the Japanese butoh dancer duo Mutsumineiro in Copenhagen on the 9th March 2026 from 15:00-19:00 at Dansatelier. This training session is separatist for black folk only.
The black butoh network is a newly established and collectively organized space for sharing affinity, love and practice of the study of Japan’s avant-garde butoh dance within an Afro/black diasporic lens and approaches. Our wish for the black butoh network is to create opportunities for Afro/black*diasporic peoples encounter each other through the movement practice and philosophy of butoh. To discover the history of the “blackening of butoh”, and to situate ourselves in the multiple temporalities of this blackening.
Takashi (2015) records butoh co-founder, Tatsumi Hijikata’s words on butoh as a “convulsion of existence” that opposes expression in the traditional sense, but rather provides a form that “expresses without expressing” (p.007). That is, a dance form that does not emerge from projection or acting, rather the contrary, a dance form that flees in time, “yet survives because it disappears” (Takashi, M. 2015)! The author, relying on and analysing Hijikata’s recorded accounts on butoh considers it a form of that begun as “anti-dance” and developed into a form of “rebellion of the body” (p.019). The author, Namiko Kunimoto, called butoh a “revolt of the flesh” through twisting (in the literal sense), bending, shaking, and maintaining the bizarre and strange in the body.
Our curiosity lies in tracing afro/black diasporic cosmologies of ritual, aspects of trance movement and lineages within butoh’s early origins. The idea is to organize a "counter-scholarship" of collective research and practice. We strive to give black bodies, movers, dancers, whether they are already butoh practitioners, teachers, students, or have been curious about butoh, the access to workshops and shared practice spaces.
The 9th March is significant as a date since it is the birthday of Tatsumi Hijikata, co-founder of early ankoku butoh (dance of darkness). Early butoh critics recognized a racialized blackness in butoh from West African and Caribean vodoo-ist cosmologies, incorporation practices and rituals. In fact, the early Hijikata’s ankoku butoh was heavily inspired by the work of the great African-American modern dancer Katherine Durham’s show tour in Japan in the 1957. The show emulated aspects from Santeria in music, and sacrificial ceremonies from Haitian voodoo/voudun during her fieldwork in Cuba, Haiti and other parts of the Caribean. We won’t be getting so much into all this YET in our meeting, but I wanted you to have this in mind.
On the 9th March, we will meet and expose ourselves to the universe of butoh from the perspective of our teachers who learned from the great Yoshito Ono, son of butoh co-founder Kazuo Ono. Their butoh philosophy is:
GIVE EVERYTHING YOU HAVE.
Dance will be born and vanished in one moment. It never continues and then, it comes back.
Dance opens unrevealed possibilities.
Only when you are trying to give everything, dance has a chance to be purified and transformation can appear.
The real deal of BUTOH is to meet the unrevealed world by revealing oneself.
Being awed, shivering will turn to be a great feeling.
Take off your guard, fully open and throw yourself into the most thrilled but nothing of special moment.
Endlessly keep on throwing yourself into it.
It is about entering it, and when you are entering, you are leaving.
Just like a flower blooming, even while it is dying.
Never stop blooming.
Our workshop shares some points for founding the bases of existence through your body.
For example:
- Diagonal line and Horizontal line
Dancer is dance
Ground is death/ Living on the death/ Living against falling/
Body as vessel
(Spears through you)
- Breathing
(Strings)
Freeze time
Transparent sensations/ Precision/ Eyes
- Gravity
(Life = Resistance)
- Space
(Between you and the others, there is no inside/outside)
Taste until your bones feel /Dance with the universe/
The universe will dance on your palm/Become the smallest point in the universe/
Hiding is where beauty breathes //Resolution of your presence/
Give a shape to the micro vibration of your life
We depart from the question: Where are you standing at? - We often forget or don’t even think about it.
About the teachers:
Mutsumineiro are a Japanese butoh dance and performance artist duo, married together as life and artistic partners, and also educators in their field. They are based just outside Oslo, Norway performing and facilitating different workshops and butoh education all over the world. Together they dance a longing for idiotic blessing moments, an eternal marriage in which Marc Chagall's flowers bloom, or even miraculous fruits of their life and their universe.
https://www.mutsumineiro.com
Practicalities:
Payment: sliding scale 350-900 DKK via mobile pay (71675213) or cash
Wear comfortable clothes
Wear thick socks or move barefooted
The training session will last 5 hours
bring water and light snacks
Session will go on the 9.3.2026 from 15:00-19:00
Address of the studio:
Dansatelier
Blegdamsvej 18A
2200 Nørrebro, Copenhagen
Contact Sall or Neiro with concerns or questions:
salllamtoro@bodyhacker.love
neironeironeiro@hotmail.co.jp
References:
Kunimoto, Namiko (2021) “Tsujimura Kazuko And The Body Object”. Asia Pacific Journal: Japan Focus,retrieved from https://apjjf.org/2021/3/kunimoto
Morishita, T. (2015) “Hijikata Tatsumi's Notational Butoh: An innovative method for butoh creation”. Tokyo, Keio University Art Center
Arimitsu, Michio (2015) “From Voodoo to Butoh: Katherine Dunham, Hijikata Tatsumi, and Trajal Harrell’s Transcultural Refashioning of “Blackness”. Published by MOMA