Chan Chi Fan, Elspeth
PANEL 2
15:45 - 17:15 (GMT+1)
How Does Butoh Give Rise to Decolonized Embodiment Through a Ruptured Ontological Hierarchy?
BIOGRAPHY
Graduating with a degree in Cinema & TV from Hong Kong Baptist University, Chan ventured to the UK to pursue her passion for dance, earning a Master’s degree in Dance Research with distinction.
Her writings have been featured in various publications, including the International Association of Theatre Critics (Hong Kong), dance journal/hk, Hong Kong Literary Criticism Society, Arts News, Dance News, Stand News, and Inmediahk.
Chan's academic pursuits delve deeply into the realm of Butoh, where she not only explores its philosophical underpinnings but also investigates its therapeutic potential. Her passion in this field was shared at the University of East London's academic conference in April 2024, and her first butoh movement workshop was held at Goldsmith University in May 2024.
As Project Manager for the Hong Kong Dance Federation, Chan managed educational, training, and outreach programmes. In 2019, she took on the pivotal role of research and coordination for the lecture series ‘3 Decades of Dance in Hong Kong’, hosted by the Leisure and Cultural Services Department and curated by Dr. Lo Wai-luk. In 2021, she served as the producer of ‘The Hollowed Man 2.0’ dance film; in 2023, she moderated the pre-performance talk ‘Butoh and the Locality of the Body - An Initial Exploration of Butoh in Hong Kong’.
ABSTRACT
Butoh decolonozies stereotypical body image by diminishing the visual dominance through peripheral visions, disorienting referential points of the body, and defamiliarizing the rigid anatomical geometry. Butoh’s ‘ethos of becoming’ (Fraleigh and Nakamura, 2006:72) dispossesses the human form of sovereignty, allowing rhizomatic re-attunement in multiplicities.
Introducing the concepts of Pluriverse* and Agential Realism (Karen Barad) centring upon ontological relationality and inseparability, this discussion investigates how butoh founder Tatsumi Hijikata re-interpreted societal crisis and injustices through the ontological revolt of body, rather than epistemological and anthropocentric approaches.
Rupture in the butoh body is nested with abstracted flesh, continuously metamorphosing into non-human metaphorical images within time-space phenomena. This ontological hierarchy dehiscence is also rooted in ‘Ma’, originating from Shintō Zen, referring to the liminal ‘in-betweenness’ flowing fluidly in corporeal experiences’ (Bellerose, 2018). Butoh’s emergence along corporeal thresholds resonates with the multiple ontologies/worlds in Pluriverse and Barad’s notion of the world as ‘intra-activity in its differential mattering’ (Barad, 2007:141).
Another founder Kazuo Ohno’s improvised and ephemeral movements and Hijikata’s speech-based training imply decolonization of coded mastery. Hijikata’s words, serving as the agency, decolonized speech from semantic context into material-discursive practice, enacting agential intra-activity in butoh’s becoming.
Butoh’s rupture may decolonize the word ‘decolonization’, by responding to the opposing yet entangled intersubjective corporeality, through equilibrial colonizing and decolonizing actions without erasing heterogeneity.
To demystify as much as to decolonize butoh which is still a mystery to many, the presentation will include visuals and videos, with keywords in Spanish and Portuguese, ensuring accessibility for multilingual audiences.
(*The notion of Pluriverse, inspired by the Zapatista uprising in Chiapas (Mexico), envisions a world in which many worlds fit in.)