butoh dancers-turned-actors

[Bruce Baird]

Markus,

Sundial is one of the one's I have seen and was thinking about when I  
wrote my comment.

I'm always a bit dubious about the implicit hagiography behind such  
appraisals as the one you relay from the deshi, (there being a vast  
tendency to turn Hijikata into something mystical and separated from  
his time rather than see him as part of an international urban- 
inflected avant-garde practice), but it is true that something  
propelled him to begin choreographing again in late 1983 after a five  
year layoff, and he was a hard drinker and user of methamphetamines  
(as  were so many during the time).  So he certainly could have  
sensed something.

The movie came out in 1987, but Hijikata died in Jan. of 1986 and was  
more or less incapacitated from December 1985.  Does anyone know when  
the shooting was?

Best,

Bruce


On Apr 27, 2007, at 9:38 AM, Mark Nornes wrote:

>
> On Apr 27, 2007, at 9:12 AM, Bruce Baird wrote:
>
>> I haven't seen all of these films, but generally the directors use  
>> the dancers when they want to depict someone who is crazed or out  
>> of the ordinary, and considering the predilections of the dancers,  
>> this is no surprise.
>>
>
> One more example along these lines: Hijikata rendered the dark  
> insanity of a man living with a Kannon statue in Ogawa's  
> (documentary) Sundial Carved With a Thousand Years of Notches,  
> playing against none other than Nikkatsu Roman Porno star Miyashita  
> Junko. It's a fascinating sequence marked by time slips and a crazy  
> performance climaxing with an unscripted plunge into a mountain  
> stream.
>
> I once spoke to one of his deshis about it, and she said it was  
> among her favorite performances. She sensed a self-consciousness  
> about his impending death. So it could be a document of far more  
> than that Magino story.
>
> markus
>
>

Bruce Baird
Assistant Professor
Asian Languages and Literatures
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Butô, Japanese Theater, Intellectual History

717 Herter Hall
161 Presidents Drive
University of Massachusetts Amherst
Amherst, MA 01003-9312
Phone: 413-577-4992
Fax: 413-545-4975
baird at asianlan.umass.edu




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