KEIO UNIVERSITY

Graduate Seminar in Theatre Studies

On November 29, 2019, Takao Kawaguchi, dancer, performer and choreographer came to Mita Campus to hold a “dance talk” about his dance pieces.

Starting with his report about the production process of The Sick Dancer and About Kazuo Ohno, we discussed the relationship between contemporary dance and butoh.

In both performances, Kawaguchi challenged to approach idiosyncratic gestures of Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno, although he had not specifically trained for butoh and thus had some difficulties in re-acting them.

We discussed intensively how specific his approaches to butoh were and how they could be artistically evaluated in the context of butoh as well as contemporary dance.