Japanese ideogram butoh consists of two components: bu is a dance, while toh means step. However, the original name had a certain addition. Ankoku Butoh meant the dance of darkness. In Maciej Rusinek's photographs, the dance of darkness is transformed into images of light. While dance expresses the pure energy extracted from the darkness of the human body, photography depicts the light that emanates from it.
Butoh arose from the spirit of the 20th century avant-garde. The creators of this "school": Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata drew on a mix of experiences from Eastern theaters, as kabuki i nõ, but also the European Ausdrucktanz and pantomime. Butoh Presented to the public at the 1959 Tokyo Dance Festival, it caused a scandal. It was meant to be a provocation against Japanese tradition and a response to the Western concept of dance - a kind of "rebellion of the body" against the dance canon. Ohno and Hijikata created an unusual phenomenon: a dance that was not about expressing feelings or narrating events as in the European tradition. Butoh also abandoned the conventionally Japanese embodiment of the actor in symbolic figures. And while new variations have been born since its inception b u t o h , its assumptions remained unchanged.
What was Hijikata's revolution all about? Spectacles butoh They do not tell a story. What is important in them is not so much the role played, but a certain ritual in which the character is revealed to the outside world. Body movements, facial expressions result from detailed observation of the natural world - the behavior of animals and plants. The place of figures developed and repeated in each successive performance is taken by improvisation. As a result, a completely new "language of dance" is created, taking a variety of forms: from tense real estate to a violent but focused gesture. The set design of the performances is reduced to simple forms, the actors - almost naked and painted white. In a dance devoid of unnecessary embellishments, space is left for what is fundamental to the body. Everything serves one thing - to "bring out" the inner energy of pure movement.
During the performances a transformation takes place. It would seem that, therefore, any attempt to document the dance, to retain its image will be incomplete. Magic butoh disappears in the attempt to tell - for it only happens when the actor and the viewer participate in this particular ritual. Perhaps, however, there is a way of recording in which it is possible to capture a trace of the butoh. Its invisible secret.
In formulated in the early twentieth century The manifesto of photodynamicism Anton G.Bragaglia wrote that photography can grasp aspects of reality inexpressible and elusive in normal visual perception. Also elusive to our eyes is what is accomplished in the human body when the movement is just beginning. A gesture that has not yet appeared, but is already "growing" in the body. In the photos, permanence and transience are visible at the same moment.
Looking at Maciej Rusinek's photographs, in which the human figure is transformed into a record of expression, one can have the impression that here at last the futurist's dream has come true - in the photographs of dancers butoh transcendental movement permeating the human body was expressed. The author, referring to the tradition of the photographic avant-garde, uses purely photographic properties and means: the nuances of double exposure or long exposure times. Thanks to this, he achieves an excellent effect: he registers vibrations and movements that are imperceptible at first glance. He stops them, but after all, he does not take away their dynamism.
In the cycle Shijima Movement allows matter and bodies to merge into one. Figures spin, costumes turn into cones. Extracted from darkness they lose their concreteness becoming one form brought out by a ray of light. In photography Minako Seki we see three figures transformed into spinning cylinders. This is not so much an image of bodies in motion, but an image of the "energy drive" permeating the body. Photography, like this specific kind of dance, is all about metamorphosis. In the frozen photographic image, energy is just waiting to be brought out into the open - to externalize what led to the creation of the trace on the emulsion. The movement of the figure is transformed into light energy, and the photo becomes a spectacle of light.
W Fujimie The transparent figure seems to emerge from the wall. Its texture merges with the dense structure of the wall. In another (Masaki Iwana) the luminous trace of the figure is superimposed on the view of the street. The center of the frame is occupied by a dynamic shape, actually a glare, which at first may seem like an overexposure of light-sensitive material. And just as the dancer somehow loses his own identity in favor of the force revealed by his body, so in the photograph the man and the world become one.
In photography Sijima The tiny human figure in the foreground is overwhelmed by an overgrown shadow in the background. It seems as if the shadow has freed itself from its "bearer" and gained its own power. An illuminated figure and a black shadow. The play of light gives the impression that the shadow overtakes the gestures of the figure and that (as in Andersen's fairy tale) it leads a separate life. In a way, the photography refers to the tradition, especially film, of the avant-garde. Scenes from the films of Murnau or Lang come to mind. In expressionist cinema, the shadow, which was the "alter ego" of the characters, symbolized their dark nature. The true face of the characters, dying in the light, was revealed by darkness. In another picture (Takeuchi Yosuhiko) the real figure has disappeared completely. Only a dark silhouette can be seen on the transparent screen.
Rusinek's photographs, however, show not so much the dark side of human nature as the power of light, through which the reuniting of the shattered can take place. In one of the photographs (Yuri Nagaoka) one character becomes many. A man was transformed into a strange and multiform being, a demon or a dragon. They are united by the person of the actor, different by the moment when his body left a mark on the photographic material. Here we return to the theme of metamorphosis. Photography made it possible to see the change, the transition from "self" to "other", because although we still see the "same" figure, it is not "the same" in every̋ second. What has been recorded is the time in which its separation and reunion takes place. If the Italian Futurist longed for an image that would show "the movement of the body dissipating," then perhaps the photographs of the butoh They would make his dreams come true. In them, after all, the body ceases to be visible, although it does not disappear. One could say that it only changes its state of aggregation.
Daisuke Yoshimoto's portrait is reminiscent of symbolic 19th century photographs. A long-haired figure on a dark background covered with fabric decorated with ornamental motifs. White face, black eyes and lips. A torso where the outlines of tendons and muscles are highlighted. This is what a 19th-century painting study might look like. But in the calm figure, in the positioning of the hand supporting the drapery, there is energy, a moment before the explosion. Even more strongly connected to the tradition of the nineteenth century is the Innocence. However, while in portraits of that time one sensed a posing-enforced immobility, the image of the man against the ornament is pervaded by a peculiar kind of "lurking". Although the slim, muscular arms do not move, they seem to be ready to move. Paradoxically, lingering does not mean real estate at all.
It would seem that what constituted the premise of the butoh (i.e., the release of body energy through dance) in a "frozen" image is impossible. Rusinek undertakes to break through photographic limitations. It is enough to look at the photographs whose main motif is faces. Frozen in a deadpan grimace, they resemble masks. However, in subsequent shots, they turn into blurred smudges. They cease to be recognizable as faces.
I invoked Bragagli's concept earlier for a reason. The problem of imaging motion occupied the attention of artists and researchers even before the invention of photography. Initially it was the desire to stop the moment, later replaced by the search for a way to put what was stopped back into motion. The manifesto of photodynamicism confirmed what was noticed earlier, that photography is excellent not only for recording, but also for analyzing movement. This is made possible precisely by the ability to cut out a fragment from a sequence of time. Thus, we can decompose a gesture into its first parts and perceive the phases that follow. This is what Eadweard Muybridge and his ilk were dedicated to: to take apart and put back together human and animal movements. For many, however, the fact that photography can be a research tool is of secondary importance. More important is what becomes visible through it.
Rusinek traces the process by which an actor's body, brought out of darkness, begins to emanate light. Mystery butoh For it lies in a metamorphosis of yet another kind: the transformation of movement into beauty takes place in it. What beauty can there be in the unnatural twisting of a figure and the grotesque grimace of a face, someone might ask? And yet beauty butoh manifests itself differently - in the energy of the body. Also, Rusinek's photographs are characterized by simply extraordinary beauty. Thanks to them, we begin to see the uniqueness of human movement and the perfection of gesture. A figure in a leap, turned downward, a figure falling or floating in space. Bodies lose their weight and transcend their own limitations. Who among us would not want to achieve the same?
Maciej Rusinek (1954) born in Poland - in Poznań, is a freelance photographer, living and working in Frankfurt am Main since 1987. Prior to that, he graduated in Polish studies and theater studies from the Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan. While still in communist Poland, he co-published and created the underground magazine of Poznan's Solidarity "Obserwator Wielkopolski", and was also associated with the environment of Teatr Ósmego Dnia, where he was an actor, assistant director, and also documented, including photographically, the theater's activities. The palette of his photographic interests is relatively wide, from landscape through various types of reportage, to the subjects that are most dear to his heart, such as portraiture and contemporary theater, especially contemporary dance theater. One of his greatest photographic passions is avant-garde contemporary dance theater from Japan - Butoh. Over the years, after many solo exhibitions, Maciej Rusinek decided to publish these works in two book publications: "Tadashi Endo - Butoh MA" and "Butoh 2", both with the telling subtitle: "The Kingdom of Body Poetry." /quote from Hijikat`y/. The former, created in 2017, is Maciej Rusinek's photographic tribute to Tadashi Endo and their long-standing artistic friendship. They met in the 1990s and since 1999 Maciej Rusinek has accompanied and photographed Endo in theaters, during performances by one of the most famous Japanese Butoh dancers in Europe. 2017 was both the 70th birthday of this great artist and the 25th anniversary of the MAMU Butoh Center in Göttingen, which he runs.
Butoh-MA, Tadashi Endo, is, in his own words: "emptiness" and "the space between". It is the immobility of his body, although he is dancing..., but actually he is not dancing, he is being danced! Complementing this first photo album are texts by Tadashi Endo and Prof. Miroslaw Kocur of Wroclaw, Poland, in German and English. The second publication, the latest "BUTOH 2" (2021), is a logical consequence of the closure of this subject by Maciej Rusinek, who for more than 30 years accompanied with his camera more than 30 different dancers (from the so-called second generation) of this artistic trend.
He consciously limited himself in the selection of works to only indigenous Japanese representatives of this trend and to the monochromatic nature of the photos, all the images included in the album are in black and white. In fact, many of the original shots are also in color. The album opens with a foreword/review from an earlier exhibition: Prof. Marianna Michalowska of Poznan, and closes with a short, personal text by the author himself on the paradoxes of theater photography, in German and English. Both publications, deliberately avoiding documenting or theorizing about the history and specificity of Butoh dance theater, are a very personal artistic testimony, an encounter of Maciej Rusinek's photographic art with this very specific art of contemporary, avant-garde Japanese dance theater.
Since November 2005, he has run his own photography studio in Frankfurt am Main.