Available until 15 August
BUTOH Sunakku—TRU Exhibition
William Klein Exhibition: GINZA 1961—Starring: The City +
Walking AR Experience: Dance Happening—Today (talk)
photo by Tatsuhiko Nakagawa
Live talks from our “BUTOH Sunakku” in Ueno/Ikenohata.
A Butoh dancer from Japan is invited to perform a “Butoh Exhibition Dance”
Photographer William Klein came to Japan for the first time in 1961, and spent his final day in Tokyo taking photographs of a street performance by Tatsumi Hijikata, Kazuo Ohno and Yoshito Ohno. One of Klein’s masterpieces, and also a valuable resource illustrating the dawn of Butoh, this series of photographs is referred to as Dance Happening.
A number of these photographs are displayed in two of the TRU Exhibitions, Walking AR Experience: Dance Happening—Today and Ginza 1961—Starring: The City. 60 years since Klein’s visit, director Naoto Iina, art critic Yuri Mitsuda and Toshio Mizohata, who has been liaising with Klein since 2005, gather to discuss this Dance Happening photography series.
As part of the talk, legendary Butoh dancer Bishop Yamada will be performing a “Butoh Exhibition Dance”.
Guest Speakers
Yuri Mitsuda
Professor at the Tama Art University Archive Center and curator at the Toyama Prefectural Museum of Art and Design, specialising in 20th century art and photography history. Author of the books Words and Things: Jiro Takamatsu’s issue (Suiseisha, 2011) and Shashin ‘geijutsu’ to no kaimenni (Photography at the interface with “art”) (Seikyusha, 2006). Co-author of For a New World to Come: Experiments in Japanese Art and Photography (Yale University press, 2015) and Provoke: Between Protest and Performance (Steidl, 2016) among others. Exhibitions include Hi-Red Center: The Documents of “Direct Action” (2013-14), Mirror Behind Hole: Photography into Sculpture (2017) and Painting into Sculpture―Embodiment in Form (2019).
Photo by Zheng Yuanbo
Toshio Mizohata
Joined the Kazuo Ohno Dance Studio in 1983, and became involved as a lighting technician for Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno’s performances both in Japan and abroad. He has produced events organised by the Kazuo Ohno Dance Studio, including Hyakkaryouran (2007) and Antony and the Ohnos (2010). Since 1990, he has been maintaining the Kazuo Ohno archives, and published many books, videos etc. including Kazuo Ohno’s Workshop Words. In 2004 he joined BankART 1929, and organised the Kazuo Ohno Festival. He established the non-profit organisation Dance Archive Network in 2016, which organises “Dance Archive Project” events, of performances inspired by archive materials.
naoto iina
Videographer, director, dramaturg, visual scenographer and producer. Iina is the founder of Dance and Media Japan and International Dance Film Festival. He is also an Associate professor at Tokyo Zokei University and lecturer at Za Koenji Theatre Academy. Recently he has been working on cross-genre works with video, dance and text. He is in charge of direction, composition, filming and editing of the online Butoh program "Re-Butoooh" (NPO Dance Archive Network).
BUTOH Exhibition Dancer
Bishop Yamada
Born in Tokyo, 1948. Began dancing in Tatsumi Hijikata’s performances in 1968. Formed the Butoh group Dairakudakan with Akaji Maro and others. In 1974 he left Dairakudakan, and put on the first and highly appraised Hoppo Butoh-ha performance Shiokubi at Butoh Juku Grand Camerio in Tsuruoka, Yamagata. In 1976 he moved to Otaru in Hokkaido and opened Theatre Uminekoya. In 1998 he choreographed Dark Wings for the Kyiv National Ballet dancers at the National Opera of Ukraine in Kiev, and then remade this performance in the same year at the Tokyo Metropolitan Theatre which was performed under the name The Door of Night for Odette. He established socomi in Kamifukuzawa, Yamanashi in 2017.