Drawing us in: The Australian Experience of Butoh and Body Weather

Abstract

Butoh or butoh–inspired dance has become increasingly popular in Australia over the last 20 years. In my thesis I aspire to understand the attraction of butoh within an Australian context. I am interested in investigating the conversion moment. I want to understand how dancers and non-dancers came to engage with and pursue the foreign form in this country, which, before the 1980s, had no relevance or obvious place in the Australian dance scene. While the thesis touches on the obvious conceptions of butoh’s attraction (exoticism, orientalism and primitivism), it also offers a way of looking at butoh in Australia as a field of practice. Using Pierre Bourdieu’s framework the thesis is able to objectively analyse the dancers’ personal experiences, drawing together the key influences of the dancers’ conversion, while simultaneously revealing the struggles, contradictions and shifts within the field. In this sense, I will explore the development of the dance form in Australia, but also valorise the research potential of the embodied experience and place that experience in dialogue with other social, cultural and historical motivations. Furthermore, the thesis records the experiences and impact of the early Australian butoh dancers, which have important historical relevance, especially as the form has established a firm foothold in the Australian performance scene in more recent years, influencing many choreographers and dancers to this day.