Bottom body

 Bottom body

 

The secret of the Bottom body

 

The bottom body was a deep question for me for a long time. I have become it so often for many years, but I couldn't understand what it is. It was just an opaque question.

But, slowly the secret of the bottom body is going to be unfolded.

During the second week of 2011 for five days we continued to research the bottom body in different aspects.

Almost students found their own unique bottom bodies. Some of them met the first bottom and second bottom body.  Transformation among them was so rich and deep taste.

Then I found that until this year we did only one or two days for researching bottom body.  This was my biggest mistake. It was too short. It needs for one week or more to meet the bottom.  I realized so.

 

I did not recognize the real importance of the bottom body until last year.

I felt that the bottom body is a special thing only for me than I could not guide students so much strongly toward the bottom body.

But, during last year we research Hijikata's last Butoh score "Quiet House", and could create various practice methods. This experience gave me strong confidence in what I am not alone. I found the boxed body for Hijikata is the same as the bottom body. And also, Ohno Kazuo had various bottom bodies. The bottom is one of the importance of transformation. In the Greece and Roman myth, the Mercury who is a symbol of transformation is put into a bottle. Also, this is a kind of bottom body. In the Aladdin’s magic lamp of Arabian night, also a giant is folded in the lamp or vase.

These smallest spaces were base camps of transformers in various cultures.

Now finally, I understand that the bottom body is a universal necessity for transformation.       

At first, the subbody method was born independently from Hijikata. But, through these processes, the subbody method and Hijikata's method resonated and are going to become oneness.

The resonance brought it.

 

 

The archetype of the Bottom body

 

Subbody school 2010 is over. At the moment, my subbody starts to integrate all the experiences of this year through the whole night. He gave me so many new awareness’s.

Awareness comes up always to find a hidden connection between issues which I regarded two different things. One of them is finding a unification of the ten bodies and the archetypes. They are resonating in the collective unconscious realm.

I didn't know what the bottom body is. I have just continued to become my bottom body. It brought me a special somatic feeling like a mystery. I suggested finding own bottom to students. Some of them didn't meet it. But a few students met it and created unique subbody. Their dance has changed completely and deepened by finding own bottom. What did happen?

About this, I will continue to deepen it.

 

 

Boxed body of Hijikata

 

In Hijikata's Butoh body, there is a boxed body. But it was a mystery to me for a long time. Finally, the question was solved. Now we are studying Hijikata's last Butoh score for "The Quiet House".

At first, we tried to decipher it. The text is so difficult and strange Japanese. Even for me, it took for over ten years to read and understand. Now we translate it into basic English. Because most of the readers are not English speakers. It is so hard to translate the most mysterious Japanese text into one thousand vocabularies of Basic English. But now we have finished it, and proceed to the second stage to read it by the body. This body reading is the most important process. Every day we read and resonate by the body. Through this process, we could meet much new awareness. One of them is the connection between Hijikata's boxed body and bottom body. We can find many variations of the boxed body in the text. A mad king was put in the box

 

A bird which becomes a box

A small box of joints--Hans Bellmer--Samurai commander--Princess--tiger

The queen will be put in a box of joints

 

When I tasted these boxed bodies by my body, suddenly I noticed "Oh! This is totally the same as the bottom body!" During I read by the only head, I couldn't notice at all, but through the body reading, body felt the same Qualia of the both. That's why the body reading is so important.

 

 

Bottom of Kazuo Ohno

 

I collected bottom shapes of Kazuo Ohno.

The only dynamic standing pose is spread to the world as if Ohno's trademark. I worried about it. It guides people to a big misunderstanding about his Butoh. Ohno's Butoh was distorted by those great poses of his pictures. Photographers used to shoot the timing of his standing and spread his big hands to the sky.

In spite of that, it is merely the final pose of his Butoh, cameramen aimed to shoot the great final pose. Because it is felt like the beauty for their eyes. But their eyes are warped by a modern daily sense of beauty. Photographers, who shoot only his great pose, distort his life of Butoh completely. And the sad thing, many Western Butoh dancers are influenced by 'the fake of Ohno's Butoh style', and it spread to the world. For long years, I worried about it. It is one of the flowers of his Butoh, all right. He looked even being happy. But the flower is not made of by flower itself. The flower becomes the flower supported by the secret and the mystery. Ohno's real dance was wandering the dark world below the knee; he faced to the edge of death, listen to the other world, full of the secrets and mysteries of life there. And he found the timing to bloom the flower. Without facing the mystery, the Butoh turns to the fake dance. Most of the photographers seem not to see his secret and mystery.

 

Yoshito Ohno, his son said

 

"Kazuo had another world under the knee. It was another cosmos for him. ‘The world of under the knee was very important for him. In the case of modern dance, the tendency to orient the upper direction against the Gravity is strong. But, for Kazuo, in the opposite. When he felt something underworld, he just falls down. The speed is terrible. In a moment he was fallen."

(" Ohno Kazuo; daily food for Spirit", 1999, Japan)

 

I collected Ohno's photos of the opposite pose against the great pose of his Butoh. It was hard, because too rare to find. Fortunately, in the works of Naoya Ikegami, I could find a few photos. I deeply appreciate Naoya's important works. It may be useful to save the worldwide misunderstanding about Kazuo's Butoh. Please taste them by your life. with stopping your daily sense of the beauty. We need to take off all conditions of the human. And ask your life, please.

 

"What is the real Flower of his Butoh?"

"What is the Secret of his Butoh?"

"What is the Mystery for his Butoh?"

 

All of Secrets and Mysteries are invisible. Only when you stop your daily mind, it will be able to resonate with for your Life.

You must find the deepest rich Flowers of Kazuo's Butoh in his bottom bodies.

 

 

Dancing from the Bottom

 

Dance from the bottom of being, this is the bottom body.

What is the bottom body?

It is the most pressed subbody from the world into the minimum size. It was not allowed to live in the daily world. It was hidden at the bottom part of the darkness of the body for long years. When we become the bottom, it is so uncomfortable, but familiar at the same time.  It is the paradox of the bottom body. It is the bottom of the being for us.

We start an experiment to create the deepest Butoh dance in the world from here as the Life which subbody and cobody become oneness.

We will sink down into where nobody knows, what nobody has been experienced yet.

 

Searching the bottom and numinous

 

Letter from Cambodia ---Young dancers in Phnom Penh

 

I gave two days’ workshop for young dancers in Phnom Penh.

They are normally learning or teaching Traditional Cambodian dance; the role of Hiro, Heroin,

Hanuman (Monkey god's dance in Hinduism) and so on.

As it was only two days, I focused on only three points.

 

1. Butoh is to transform a dead body which mediates between the living world and the dead world.

2. Stop daily mind and listen in the subtle body feeling in the darkness of the body.

3. Find each own bottom and search numinous body feeling which you have never felt.

 

Searching the bottom and numinous

1 and 2 is a normal process of the subbody method, and 3 the bottom was a special experiment

at Cambodia. The bottom is a unique body posture for each subbody which is warped or shrunken into the limit. At the bottom we can meet novel, numinous Qualia easily comparing the daily postures. It is not only the physical shrunken shape but shape or movement in which the Qualia Become thickest.

As it is so difficult to explain by word, I showed some samples of the bottom of Hijikata and me, and let them search their own bottom which has never done, and never seen, through warping, twisting, shrinking, stretching each part of the body until the limit. If one meets numinous feeling in it, follow it, and create your own dance from there. I also used the cracked face, decayed body, warped roots in Angkor which is familiar for them.

Their self-research was so sincere and full of challenging spirit. Most of them were from poor families and they couldn't speak English. But through bodily communication, they got essential points perfectly like blotting paper.

The last dances which they found moved me deeply.

My conviction that the bottom has an unknown possibility for necessary creation was confirmed.

The bottom is not only shrunk posture; any posture can be the bottom which one can meet one's own necessary movement.

The reason why one feels a deep strange connection with the bottom posture is not understood by oneself. It is numinous, but there must be hidden the deepest secret for one's life in it. The movement which comes out from the bottom spontaneously has a thick possibility to be a necessary dance for each.

For example, the transformation from the shape of a girl to an animal was the key to flower, secret and mystery for Hijikata.

Research the bottom posture and numinous movement. It is the treasure house of essential creation.

The bottom, numinous, and edge are connected deeply. This year we will investigate in these Qualia deeper.

 

 

 

Encounter the necessary bottom body

 

The bottom body is the quietest body which you can be yourself.  It is the base for your exploration in the darkness of the body. It is like your home. Though there are so many subbodies in the darkness of the body, the bottom body is the most neutral one which is not bound by any tendencies.

1.    Searching the bottom body for the present

Release all tensions and intensions completely through drop-down breathing. By each breathing, release yourself and meltdown into the most comfortable body posture.  When you meet a posture which you can be the quietest body, and if you feel some unknown deep connection to your depth of yourself, it may be a possibility for your bottom body. Regard it a bottom body for the present.

Ask your bottom body, “What do you want to do most?”  If you feel some subtle tendencies in the darkness of body, follow it and amplify it until a subbody movement, and come back the bottom body. Try this several times. In each time open different channels, with different timing, scale, speed. Repeat it as much as possible.

If you can calm down as quiet as a stone, you will catch various sub-signal in different channels, and so many subbodies will come out.  If not, search for another posture of the body.

Try to find the bottom body which is able to open all channels from there; body, movement, visual, audio, emotion, relationship. world-self, and thinking-awareness channel.

2.    Finding the necessary bottom body

Ask your bottom body for the present, “Who are you?”, “Where are you from?”

If your bottom body presents the answer, “Don’t you know? This is the shape of true yourself”, it may be a necessary bottom body for you.

Cut and polish the shape of the bottom body toward unique posture which you have never seen, and never done. When you succeed to create a unique shape of the bottom body, you will feel the individuation which you are it yourself. From the necessary bottom body, so many subbodies come out one after another. It seems as if an infinite fountain of creation. Just enjoy it. The bottom body and subbodies which connect to the bottom body will become your intimate friends for a whole life long.

 

1