1 + 1 = infinity
Interview with interdisciplinary artist, dancer Butoh, choreographer, and artist Maya Dunsky in the framework of the international project “The Temptation by Myth.”
Natella Speranskaya: Maya, you are an interdisciplinary creator: an artist, a dancer, a choreographer, a set designer, a creator of costumes for your performances. For me, you are the embodiment of the union of the Apollonian and Dionysian principles. When I see your dance, I catch myself thinking that I am watching a cosmogonic process. It’s like you’re creating a new world every time. And you are one of those creators for whom there is no difference between art and life. How would you describe the creative process? Is it a ritual, a meeting with your inner self, the disclosure of profound potential, the path of transformation, a conversation with God, or…?
Maya Dunsky: Each and every one of these points is a natural part of life, emanating from our very being, expressing the coming together of Apollonian and Dionysian principles. I often reflect on the distance between creating as an artist and creating my daily life as a woman. Living my daily life as the way I conduct myself in the creative process will be a fulfillment of my deepest wish. I admit, however, that these creative processes reveal ways of narrowing the distance between the two. To live life is to take part in ceremonies and gestures that mirror frames of mind, alternations of thought. These are continually reflected in the language of the body and express an undecipherable secret.
Most of the time I live and create as if today is my last day on this earth.
I hope beyond hope that my creative process is not only an encounter with my inner self. I yearn to allow the spirit of all things to move through me and to become a clear and concise declaration. This is how I take it upon myself to become part of the secret. To remain flexible and open to the spirit. Eventually, my own private narrative does not even interest me.
The creative process is a complex and yet uncomplicated mathematical gestalt. I experience this mysterious process as complex but simple because it is not separate from life, and because it is natural. In my mind, the mathematics of a free flowing creation is based on the liberating equation: 1 + 1 = infinity.
Like nature, this flexible mathematics is not linear. Combining parameters together generates endless possible solutions. The creative process is a voyage to the expanses of void; where one find quiet and effortless attention, yielding to awaken dreaming, to reflection, to gathering.
The soil of creation is the void. The potential quietly resides in that white translucent void. There I clearly hear the whisper. There the information vibrates ever so delicately. This is where I find the reservoir from which I make the first choice, the choice asking to be made, to evolve, and to be sent out into the world.
Substance from the spirit, soul, the mind, and the body traverse an inner culture and converge out of passion and exhilarance, alongside the realization that I must choose. I have to select from all that is gathered. I must decide what to bring into visible space and what to let go.
This motion of letting go is constant and necessary, in order to create an accurate emphasis.
This means that the process of creating is accompanied by constant farewells. This makes room for forward motion and for the emergence of new and surprising directions.
The weaved world is spread like a new ground. I give myself to it, and wonderingly travel in its far reaches.
My creative processes involve emotio-mental frames of spirit and of mind. I nourish them with visual substances that I passionately absorb in my daily life, as well as with inner landscapes. These are as real to me as any other plane of existence.
My conscious movement (but not only that) is made of the awareness of a mind/brain within a heart and a heart within a mind/brain.
The inner visions I awaken to are also related to cores capes of beauty and loss. I am enthralled and especially drawn to the tension that exists in the range between beauty and loss. This tension exists significantly in my daily life and so I sense the naturalness of the transition / cruise from the inside to the visible space without. Really like infusion and diffusion. Just like breathing.
The absence is etched within the loss. I am fascinated by the presence of absence. Muteness is the language. Silence is an abstract narrative, devoid of time and shape. All these guide my experience away from the obvious, both as a woman and as an artist.
The creative processes continuously ripple through daily life, even while I am asleep. My bodies are my studio. Very frequently, an entire scene comes to high-definition-life in my mind’s eye — the character, the costume, the lighting, the physical existence of the persona on stage, the essence it delivers to me and to the world…
Sometimes I discover or am drawn to a title that seems to be written in my inner spaces. A name as of yet unborn dance piece. The creative process continues on stage as I perform. To me, these are- LOVE LETTER FROM THE VOID, and the hues are not necessarily pink.
The sense of newness is absolutely necessary in this process. Such sensation allows me to remain evergreen and fresh. This is the basis of a dance piece that remains faithful to the improvisational language of Butoh. An authentic language in an inner culture. A language imprinted in my DNA. One that is alive even before a concrete language is learned. This is a primal and universal language. Timeless, ancient and always new, whispered in the sphere of ecstasy, its sounds are visual and it indicates the way back home –into the release from the corporeal.
Each and every finished piece in every creative medium is a part of the infinite process, waiting to be discovered. The creative processes are voyages of overcoming, even of reconciliation. I create despite of everything and not thanks to everything.
Natella Speranskaya: Your teacher Kazuo Ohno said that he felt that both the living and the dead were looking at him once during one of the performances. I think you have also experienced this feeling more than once? If Butoh’s dance blurs the boundary between the worlds of the dead and the living, then, in my opinion, this speaks of his Dionysian spirit. At the feast of the god Dionysus, the living and the dead always merge, and the border separating the kingdom of Hades disappears just as the sense of time disappears. We often forget that Dionysus is not only a frenzied madness and a loud ringing of timpani. The call of Dionysus made the bacchantes turn to stone, freeze in icy silence, their eyes wide open. Walter Otto described this state as “the melancholic silence of the maenads.” I want to ask you, how do you feel the presence of Dionysus in your dance? What does the Dionysian principle do with the dancer’s body?
Maya Dunsky: The birth of death is eternal. It is weaved into the birth of life. This combined movement is in fact true biologically, physiologically and chemically. In my world, the dead are entities with entire lives. I experience their presence as an energetic, completely realistic encounter. Just like dreaming is an actual layer of reality. We are a part of the Akashi record, and so collective memories are encoded in our DNA. The connection to these flexible-fluid networks is constant and natural for me.
Blurring boundaries between life and death, the disappearance of the sense and perception of time, changes in the perception of size, transitioning to boundless duration — these are all significant internal parts of the language of Butoh, and are naturally Dionysian. These experiences are expressed in my work in various ways.
The emotional body is the engine of Butoh language just like it is the basis of my life as a human, existing here on this earth, physically embodied. The language of Butoh is intense. It exists in the extremities, it is total. Even when taking a simple and stilled stance in space I should be completely awake and aware.
Just like Ohno Kazuo described it — every happening and every emotion are always unbearable.
Ecstasy, passion, and madness, the terrible freeze… all these elements of the Dionysian principle exist to varying degrees in the entirety of the dancer’s bodies: the emotional, mental, energetic, spiritual, body of pain, and physical bodies.
These immense movements vibrate and rise out of the inner scapes. They reflect in the physical body as if in a battlefield. This is the arena of the visible space. In fact, both the Dionysian and the Apollonian principles co-exist in all the bodies, including the physical body in the visible space. While I think about the relationship between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, the word emerges. The whole needs the coming together of these two forces. The various ways by which these principles intermix allow for the singularity of individual expression
The Dionysian principle electrifies and fills the dancer’s body with unimaginable excitement. This is an extreme energetic and physical experience. The changing quanta create the authenticity of my dance, as I always measure and re-measure them at every given moment.
These exact transient instillations are the creations of the Silent Inner Warrior.
It seems that she is indeed Apollonian… always very serene and precise. She is a warrior who never fights. She is constantly in the stance of the deep observer. The Silent Inner Warrior is an essential and powerful tool that allows the dance to seep through the inner spaces into the physical body and its various layers. It etches its signature on this body, transfixing both myself, the dancer-witness, and the active observer. The energetic body receives the nourishment it requires for the dance to continue, while deliver and communicate what the heart asks for
Silent Inner Warrior is a feminine tool, even when the dancer is male. This is a tool of containment, of steadfastly standing in the eye of the storm, serenely, with alert tranquility that sees all and that is able to convey its messages to the visible space in delicate and powerful mixtures. This is a vital and elegant tool.
Thanks to the Silent Inner Warrior the dancer’s body expresses the secret, the enigma, the whisper emerging from eternity. She is the one who contains emotions, keeping them from spilling over and breaking out. The dancer and space exist as one presence, treasured in climax, exposed, timeless. Hence the Butoh dance is perceived for me as an ecological dance that expresses a principle of implosion, of energy accumulation and constant nourishment.
The expression of the dance can be the Apollonian principle in terms of its level of containment in the visible space. Nonetheless, this is a very linear division. Containment, sadness, suffering, all these are also experienced in totality and in ecstasy, just like the Dionysian continuum… the line separating the two parts of the table is erased, dissolved — between the tally of good/pleasant/positive/transcendent etc. and of bad/ugly/difficult/negative/stupid/inferior etc. All of the emotional, mental, energetic and visual materials that express a myriad of perceptions are present without any judgement, and share their space in the awakened consciousness. The Dionysian and the Apollonian are weaved together to express the language of Butoh at its best. This is profoundly liberating.
While the Apollonian principle is reflected in linear temporality, the authentic language of Butoh is timeless. It exists in ecstatic expanses and allows the dancer to experience extended worldliness.
My dance experience is of a flexible duration. Even static gestures and stillness are full of excitement and intense concentration. Everything is intense.
A gesture of DOING gains value when the movement is backed by the internal BEING. This is an issue of How and not of What. A good imagery for the combination of Dionysian and Apollonian principles in the language of Butoh is a boat on a faraway horizon — its motion seems uniform, peaceful and almost imperceptible. At the same time, it is powered by a huge engine — a rumbling machine in its belly, never ceasing to create energy.
Natella Speranskaya: I want to touch on the topic of death. Master Tatsumi Hijikata compared Butoh to a Cadaver who sought to straighten up at the cost of any suffering. A Dead Body that can dance is a fascinating and at the same time frightening image. Still, what is the relationship of the Butoh dancer with his death? What animates the Cadaver and fills it with the energy of movement?
Maya Dunsky: As a Butoh dancer, my relationship with death involves the perception of death as an entity and not necessarily as a private event. The birth of death is constant and is integrated within the birth of life.
These are two intertwined existential motions. I am fascinated by the transitions between them. The changes, the transformative emotional, mental, energetic and physical motions are the heart of dance.
The stirring juxtaposition of death with the beauty — with farewell- with the loss, with letting go — is all heightened experiences. These are the threads which embroider transformation, by which it is etched into the physical body and becomes a clear declaration that is open to boundless understanding within visible space.
Being a cadaver means living entirely and totally in ‘the other place’, to completely be in it and with it. The utter agreement to BE, invigorates and fills the dancer with energies that transform into movement.
Agreeing to work with every possible imagery leads to enlargement of the expanse of imagination.
Touching death is being in contact with the dark, the unseen, the unperceivable, the mysterious, the unknown; that which is in the back.
Death is an unsafe, uncertain, dangerous and forgotten domain, causing discomfort in the habitual and automatic consciousness of most of us
Alongside all these co-exist, there is also the longing to recall in this mighty passage, in the inconceivable experience that seems to have plunged into the depths of the abyss of dim oblivion.
These opposite directions are challenging and require the dancer to overcome in order to be magnetized into the unknown, while pulling the body out of the COMFORT ZONE.
This brings about a fascinating state of alienation/estrangement — knowingly creating an incognito space between herself and her familiar physical body, its habitual gestures and recognizable organs, with which she automatically identifies. This is a thrilling experience that begets fresh frames of mind, leading to new energies and enriching the motile language of the Butoh dancer. More than to her own death the Butoh artist reaches to the roots of fear and these also include the fear of death.
The infrastructural perceptual principle of the Butoh language is that the dancer does not dance the corpse but rather is “the corpse.” It is a completely different state of being that maintains a total living space, expressing essence.
The dancer does not dance death — the dancer lives death. Is death. Her dance is the life of death.
The description of Master HIGIKATA TATSUMI compares the Butoh to a corps that sought to align with the price of all suffering, connects to the words of Master OHNO KAZUO who described the dancer’s experience and mental / emotional state as UNBEARABLE, including also beauty and pleasure in this range. Away from the comfort zone, away from any habit and any mundane perception.
Bhutto language is charged with positive and vital tension By virtue of this existential state, finally reflected in the physical body.
The corps is not preoccupied with a narrative. The corps is a quiet truth. The corps is a secret that the dancer herself learns to know while she gives herself to the bare essence — “A Corps”. This occurs in the dancer’s body while at the same time she is a wonder-full witness together with the active audience.
Natella Speranskaya: In a dance based on improvisation, imagination plays an important role. I should note that today the word “imagination “has suffered the same fate as the word “myth.” If “myth” turned into a synonym for “fairy tale,” then” imagination “began to be thought of as” fantasy,” “fiction.” Meanwhile, imagination, imaginatio is the “ability to create the world,” an instrument of alchemical operation. The world of imagination, Mundus Imaginalis, is the meeting place of the divine (descending) and the human (ascending); it is the sacred center where the coincidentia oppositorum takes place; this is the world of the soul, the realm of metaphysical images, speaking of which Henry Corbin quotes the words from the Gnostic Gospel of Philip: “Truth did not come into the world naked but in symbols and images.” What role does imagination play in your multifaceted creativity?
Maya Dunsky: An encounter between the descending-divine and the ascending-human requires our consent to free ourselves from the bounds of the dense frequency that surrounds us, and to rise to a timeless strata where the frequencies are airy, ethereal, allowing us, without any friction, to open up to multi-sensory and multi-dimensional possibilities and informations. Consciousness is awake and extended in liquid flexibility. Intelligence is soft and profound, beyond perception. We are again at home.
Here, in the third dimension we are embodied in a physical body, experiencing reduction into form. We are exiled within our physical body and must relax into this tremendous abandon, forgo. Imagination is a magnificent gift, comforting, flexible and boundless. The imagination itself is an ever changing transformative entity, directly and profoundly affects my whole existence.
Beyond describing it as a tool, the imagination in my worlds is a sensual kingdom, multi-sensory and ecstatic. Imagination is like an essential organ, even a pulsating body. In fact, creativity occurs already at the moment of the primal connection to imagination — as a reality in itself.
Deep inside me there is no terminology of “I imagine that…”, but rather “I see that…”. I am inside the scenario without any friction. Just like the fresh and passion-full world of a child, without boundaries.
The expanses of imagination are open, they bubble, and the nectar of life incessantly seeps through them into all of the mundane scenarios. Naturally, it breathes into all of my creative domains. To me, imagination is an existential stratum without which I cannot think how my life as a woman and as an artist would be possible. Undoubtedly, it is a refined tool, highly sophisticated and elaborate tool of emotional and mental alchemy. It is the heart of creation. It is like the perpetual breath, without which there is no fire and no meaning. Imagination is a force creating interest and amazement, attention and passion, curiosity and ever-renewing alertness. In fact, what distinguishes us and separates us from other animals is imagination.
Among other things, it allows me to create new contexts, to strip- to abstract away the image or the symbol or the ceremony from the narrative, to reach and emphasize the essence. By virtue of imagination and the mastery of inner attention, of thought and of the awakened dreaming, the garment is born. The process is fascinating.
It enhances the surprising acquaintance with the persona alongside the creation of the sound-track for the performance or the choice and design of existing sound tracks. All these facets weave the inner and visual essence of the archetype. These multi-faceted processes are imbued with pondering and dreaming, mistakes and corrections — happy accidents, gestures of salvaging and gathering of pieces of life and pulsating materials that usually get thrown away in the trash.
I prefer choosing materials suffused by beauty and loss. Materials that do not broadcast a brand new product from the store. The motion of imagination is etched into the procedural layers, swarming with the vibrations of death and life and of treasured secrets. I find it important to keep these layers exposed enough, so that they are apparent in the final product. When I paint with oil, I also use my own aerial techniques. Multiple transparent layers, one on top of the other, create effects and movement, and these are all apparent in the final piece. I knowingly preserve markings of the creative path, imprinting of milestones that shape the intimate process of the heart-orthography of the piece.
The perception of space and the selection of elements for the dance performance develop out of the impassioned effervescence that characterizes the infinite kingdom of the imagination.
The spiral mathematics in the realm of quiet ecstasy is: 1+1 = Infinity
The lingual tool of the art of improvisation exists in the equation: Profound Freedom = Deep Discipline
Natella Speranskaya: Maya, tell me about your BeButoh method. Is it possible to correlate the inner movement and ecstatic presence born in it with the Apollonian and Dionysian principles?
Maya Dunsky: Be Butoh — Creative Exploration Studies
Be Butoh is the name I chose for my method. This is to emphasize that it is not about Doing or about Human Doing, but rather about Human Beings. Not to thinks about “the thing” and not to dance “the thing”. Be “the thing”.
Also, the word ‘be’ in Hebrew means ‘inside me’.
I developed my method over the span of 10 years, when I began studying in Japan with the master Ohno Kazuo. It took me that long to better understand the depth and intensity of the experience I had in Japan in general and with Ohno Kazuo in particular. The immediate, most powerful memory I carry with me from my time studying with Ohno Kazuo is a clear image at his Yokohama studio — we are in the practice and the sensei is running around among us with his unique body language, raising his face towards the sky, his palms spread high above his head and with almost poetic desperation he cries out AI SHATTE….AI SHATTE — make love… make love.
During those ten years, I refused to perform.
I continued to create in painting and in music.
Gradually I found words with which to express the language of Butoh. The western way of understanding and assimilating experiential messages requires explanations, and the methods of communicating and of learning are different than those you find in Japan.
Since then, I see myself as an enthusiastic partner of my Be Butoh students. We are avid partners in exploration, in development, and as mutual travelers, researching depth expanses by a refreshing creativity, in a path of a meaningful authenticity.
Be Butoh method is based on the complete faith in the potential of all who come to the studio. The format is based on the profound understanding that we are all born as creative and imaginative artists. The toolbox of this method contains the techniques that allow us to recall this essence of our being, by our very nature. . The various tools help us strip away the myriad layers and screens, to shed opinions and perceptions, habit, beliefs, and whims that have piled up along the years and that have distanced us from the fountain of infinite creation, from the primal authenticity with which we were blessed. The method is suitable also for those who practice psycho-drama, dance therapy and other therapeutic professions that touch on imagination, transformation, empowerment and healing.
The language of Butoh draws its varied expressions from a direct and total voyage into the depths of the soul, and leads to extremism alongside a climax of introversion a world of magic and ceremonies. Integrations of intense emotional contrasts coexist in a collected ecstasy.
The practice of Be Butoh explores inner frequencies and movement which gain power and ripple from the inner spaces of the body, seep through the inner fluids in which the muscles, the bones and the internal organs float. They slowly and gently merge into an ecstatic presence. Be Butoh is both art performance and a method that brings about emotio-mental transformation and self-healing.
The practice is based on improvisation, imagination and constant creativity. It requires deep attention and simultaneous directed observation towards the energetic, the emotional, the mental, the physical and the spiritual phases. The guidance at Be Butoh studio is created through emotional and physical imagery that ignites the fire of imagination and creativity, leaving all options open for varied understanding and intuitive choices that allow for flexibility. The practice is supported by carefully chosen soundtracks. These are mostly abstract soundtracks that bring us closer to the inner spaces and to the heart-language of Butoh.
In addition to the practice, the participants engage in dialog about the nature of the experiences and processes they go through, emphasizing the cognitive process as an inseparable part of aware creation.
This format of inquiry highlights the importance of accompanying and respecting all creative processes, and carry the aim to lead transformative pathway from the therapeutic districts to the artist’s path. Such path is paved as the participants let go of their private narratives and replace them with essential existential, personal and intimate declarations that are delivered out into the world.
It is learned How to refine the dancer’s presence into an intimate being, free of a private story. It is a vibrating presence in space, rich in positive tension, treasured at climax and full of secret.
Be Butoh method introduce the creative participant to the benefits of the Bhutu language. The many codes of Butoh are in fact a distinct language. Unlike any other language, the symbols-letters of Butoh are infinite. These symbols are born out of the hidden mystery present in each participant. When practicing Butoh, the creative participants learn how to invent new and original letters, born of the mystery hidden within them and to develop words for their unique own lexicon.
Alongside the group practice, Be Butoh method emphasizes the importance of solo work, where the complex and charged array of my-self in front the world / my-self with the world, can be examined. The practice also includes working in pairs. The space between the dancers is a third entity, making a trio out of the duet. In addition Duets and trios are performed in front of the group, bringing forward the relationship of leader/follower, providing reflection, mirroring, and witnessing.
An integral part of the Be Butoh format is the creation of a piece of garment / a costume. I name this highly complex process “The Garment is the Home”. Participants create costumes that inspire them and that promote — both consciously and subconsciously — the various qualities that they wish to develop in their dance work.
The clothes can be soft and comfortable or very unpleasant and difficult to move with. The process of creating or finding a piece of clothing that can be manipulated, brings about a space of contemplation, of amusement, of wondering and of experimentation. The process is a summons that produces ground for an unknown persona, one that we have never met before, to land mysteriously into the layers of our consciousness. The archetype slowly emerges flesh and bone when it finds a new home, a new zone of existence, a new body. The dancer surrenders into this body, and a hidden door opens in his/her awakened heart and mind. Previously unknown, hidden contents float and emerge into and out of the presence of the garment.
In creating an expanse — garment, an unknown persona is born; a new dance is born.
BE BUTOH Method — The main principles being researched and learned
- One Eternal Step.
Posture — The golden thread. The back of the neck is deployed as a soft, breathable fan
- Butoh dance begins at peak and moves from peak to climax.
- Any gesture and / or change are an event that is engraved in the space of visibility and constitutes a clear statement.
- The perception of space. Space as an entity. The space as a whole. The space where the dancer subsists.
Sharpening the deep and unique relationship with the inner spaces of the body and with the space that surrounds and supports the dancer from the outside. Emphasis on the experience of space as a concrete element with its own presence.
Understanding the role and meaning of space as a major element in which I am hosted and which continues to exist even as I leave.
The Butoh dancer is gently absorbed into the space. The dancer is not engaged in the conquest of space. The dancer is in a constant duet with the space.
- Awake consciousness creates the space between movement and emotion.
Emotion evokes motion
Motion evokes emotion
- The dancer does not dance the “thing” — she is the “thing”. The process is: Embracing the secret- dancing the secret- Being the secret
- Continuous thought / Thinking as a creative tool — the dancer does not think about … she becomes the thought itself and thus she is free to create in real time, in the language of improvisation and to have faith in an ongoing sequence of consciousness. This is how the artist finds his unique language.
- Change in the perception of concepts of size and time -
1. An infrastructural and main technique for the expression of the Butoh language — the dancer decomposes the motion into the innumerable particles from which it is made in space. Every millimeter is experienced as an ocean. Every millimeter is a place to observe, to listen to, to stay in and to be in a complete dedication to. This is not about dancing slowly. These are the qualities of decompose any movement. A range of musical duration charged with accent and positive tension is created.
- 2. Maximalist minimalism. In the depths/ abyss of the micro, the macro is revealed.
- Release from the acquired habit of creating shapes in space.
The Butoh dancer does not “think” form. She “thinks” energy and being, learns to break free from the need to create shapes in space. She gives up the need to cling to form and even to movement itself in order to justify being a dancer. She is willing to feel naked and vulnerable.
Her dance is an exposed statement, echoing in unsafe areas.
- Conscious breathing — Breathing is not just an action. Breathing is a zone. It is a space that the dancer creates for herself at every moment anew. The breath is like a placenta that envelops the dancer.
- It is the breath that gives rise to the movement. Breathing is a perfect master and is a perfect dance.
With the help of consciousness, the dancer breathes the changing spaces that movements produce between her visible organs. Thus she pours meaning into the spaces that her dancing body constantly creates.
More than in the concrete physical organs it selves, the dance takes place in the spaces created between the organs of the body. In these spaces the breathing of the dance itself takes place.
- Creation on the basis of Repetitive Movement — the movement is taken from a simple everyday gesture, displaced and transmitted to the language of the Butoh by a musical approach of the dancer, changing rhythms and changing movement qualities.
Movement breaths within stillness — Stillness breaths within movement. One emphasizes and contains the other.
- Introduction to the Silent Inner Warrior and constant communication with her.
- Face-Inner face relationship. An encounter with the face behind the face. This posterior face does not belong to the dancer. This is a blind date, for the first time. These posterior faces form the gate for the dance and evoke the dance to reverberate through the bodies.
- Contrasting qualities sizzle and express themselves at the same time.
- The Witness technique. Being 100% the dancer and 100% the witness, at the same time
- Freedom = Discipline: The Key to the Art of Improvisation
- The Garment is The Home
- What is “NEW”?
Is it possible to correlate the inner movement and ecstatic presence born in it with the Apollonian and Dionysian principles?
One of the essential definitions of a precise work of art in any medium is the connections and relationship between the Dionysian and Apollonian principles. The joining of these two forces is vital in order for different types of balance to co-exist. This co-existence imbues each artistic expression and every artwork with a noticeable presence, meaningful, of high value and necessity.
In the language of Butoh, as I live and understand it, the Dionysian and Apollonian principles are intertwined like a braided braid with the line, rhythm and pulsating life from it glowing and fascinating.
Transformation occurs from Apollonian to Dionysian and vice versa in the relationship between internal movement, which is gently shaped and penetrates through the internal fluids of the body, permeates through all layers of the skin, until it is engraved in the visible space. The outburst and the collection, the drama and the restraint, create in their coexistence the positive tension, necessary for the accuracy of the Butoh dance. This particular precision is what creates the ‘other place’ where the language of the Butoh breathes, even when the source of the chosen gesture is mundane. More than the word ‘control’, the word ‘collection’ is correct to describe the transformation from the face to the space of visibility.
It is the same drop that is not poured into the full cup and thus the contents of the cup do not overflow and slide while breaking the magic, shattering the secret and ruffling the mystery, which by its very nature seeks to remain deciphered. I am thrilled to be at ease in the realms of mystery and secret, to feel and know absolutely that I am part of the secret, a perfect reflection of it.
This serene, intense, and utter composure is Apollonian. Consciousness is riveting, animating ecstatic Dionysian excitation. The acquired toolbox of the Be Butoh method augments and reinforces the coordinated cruising between the inner spaces and the transformative reflection of their substance in the space of visibility.
There is something so primal and natural in combining these two principles, the Dionysian and the Apollonian. When a baby is born, it is released from the womb in climatic efforts that are accompanied by the mother’s outcry. The experience of separation, loss, and exile begins with this birth, the bravest event of the baby’s life. An elusive and determined yearning is also born in this charged and mysterious day. The entire scene is of an explosion of effort and unbearable pain.
The baby, only just now a fetus floating in the warm uterine fluids, an energetic essence in ecstatic state, wrapped by the placenta, experiences with cruel suddenness the outside world, with its scents, its harsh tones, clumsy movements and more. The baby is wrapped in a coarse fabric that burns its body like fire. The baby’s body is still gathered, its tiny fists clenched, its whole being vibrates a secret.
Nature reverberates incessantly the universal laws.
© November 2021 Maya Paulina Dunsky, Israel. All rights reserved.
