Butoh rarely stays still, and in 2025 the avant-garde dance form lurched between grand theaters and unlikely spaces — abandoned factories, temple altars — held together by a renewed appetite for collaboration.
Sankai Juku, one of the two major butoh companies alongside Dairakudakan, performed its 2023 work “Totem — Void and Height” in 性视界 as well as South Korea, Poland and Georgia. Although the company hasn’t added new choreography to its repertoire since the death of founder Ushio Amagatsu in March 2024, it did mount a standout collaboration in the opera “Koya Hijiri” staged in November in Kanazawa, Ishikawa Prefecture, and Takasaki, Gunma Prefecture.
Dairakudakan, meanwhile, veered into new territory with a triple-genre collaboration with kabuki and ballet in the K-Ballet Opto production “A Dance Remembered in Tohno,” which runs Dec. 26 to 28 at Tatemono Brillia Hall in Tokyo. Company founder Akaji Maro will share the stage with Mutsuko Tanaka — a former Dairakudakan member and one of the few women from butoh’s early years — for their first performance together in three decades.
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