“Madam, if you are an experienced doctor, I’m certainly an experienced patient,”
(Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov)

“It is a white kimono made of hemp or cotton in which a dead person is laid out in Buddhism.
I am a patient infected with a mysterious disease called ‘butoh’. The essence of butoh is that the spectator who looks at it is invited to look into their heart. The extreme slowness of movement does not allow them to remain on the surface.

Butoh does not express specific feeling or concept. It is not meditation, either. However, the performance leaves the spectators with a peaceful and beautiful feeling. I want my butoh to be a tool to convey the energy accumulated in a human being. And I hope to be part of the dance scene which can express the flow of time. I prefer to face myself first rather than my work. I set a conversation between my heart and my body. I dance my egoistic, independent language of dance developed in over 30 years. “Kyoukatabira of Body” is woven from: truth, grotesque, ruins, glory and misery, dullard, corporeal dignity, awkwardness, desire, beauty, running appearance, counterfeiter, the unknown, ambition, darkness, bacteria, Eros, a fool, the sacred and the profane, absurdity, graceful cruelty, and the 13th burial of myself, fake, idiot, running, surface tension of the heart, the aching Dancing Girl, corporeal dignity, betrayal, loneliness, compass etc. …
When it changes to recognition and the heart and body wither, let’s take a walk the inside a coffin.

(Daisuke Yoshimoto)