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Title details for Butoh by Sondra Fraleigh - Available

Butoh

by Sondra Fraleigh
ebook
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Both a refraction of the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and a protest against Western values, butoh is a form of Japanese dance theater that emerged in the aftermath of World War II. Sondra Fraleigh chronicles the growth of this provocative art form from its mid-century founding under a sign of darkness to its assimilation in the twenty-first century as a poignant performance medium with philosophical and political implications. Through highly descriptive, thoughtful, and emotional prose, Fraleigh traces the transformative alchemy of this metaphoric dance form by studying the international movement inspired by its aesthetic mixtures. While butoh has retained a special identity related to its Japanese background, it also has blossomed into a borderless art with a tolerant and inclusive morphology gaining prominence in a borderless century. Employing intellectual and aesthetic perspectives to reveal the origins, major figures, and international development of the dance, Fraleigh documents the range and variety of butoh artists around the world with first-hand knowledge of butoh performances from 1973 to 2008. Her definitions of butoh's morphology, alchemy, and philosophy set a theoretical framework for poetic and engaging articulations of twenty butoh performances in Japan, Europe, India, and the West. With a blend of scholarly research and direct experience, she also signifies the unfinished nature of butoh and emphasizes its capacity to effect spiritual transformation and bridge cultural differences. | Cover Title Page Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Part One: Alchemy and Morphology Chapter 1. Butoh Alchemy Chapter 2. The Morphology of Butoh Chapter 3. Is Butoh a Philosophy? Part Two: Alchemists: Essays and Poetry on Transformation 1. One Thousand Days of Sunshine and Peace 2. Whole World Friend 3. History Lessons 4. Crocodile Time 5. Goya La Quinto del Sordo 6. The Sounding Bell 7. Ancient Dance and Headless 8. Salt 9. Da Vinci 10. The Cosmos in Every Corner 11. Risky Plastic 12. Fine Bone China 13. Moving MA 14. Weak with Spirit 15. Waking Woman 16. Torn 17. Butoh Ritual Mexicano 18. Mourning the Earth 19. Quick Silver 20. Daemon of the Riverbank Part Three: Ursprung Unfinished 21. Ursprung 22. Kuu (Emptiness) Biographies of Dancers Notes Bibliography Index |"Translated poetically and mapped out with scientific precision . . . The book offers a pedagogical map for taking the time to suspend what we know, how we believe we've come to know it, and question what might happen, if we turn, spiral, slip, fall, slither, and sense our way 'back to the dance itself.'" —Dance Research Journal
"Illuminates the myriad ways butoh and its Japanese aesthetic have influenced and been influenced by Western thought."—Pacific Affairs
"Recommended."—Choice
| Sondra Fraleigh is a professor emeritus of dance at the State University of New York College at Brockport. She is the author of Dancing into Darkness: Butoh, Zen, and Japan and Dancing Identity: Metaphysics in Motion.

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  • English