butoh 1.2.3…(wrecked beach)

A performer’s poems: written from the precarious and fragile, evocative alchemistic moments that butoh (re)presented for me…on this day, in and for that moment. Penned immediately following three consecutive day, outdoor events, these words capture my body-as-participant in Kokoro Dance’s 19th Annual Wreck Beach performances, Vancouver, Canada (July 2014). The poems chart the subtle fluidity and changing landscape – internally/externally – of each fresh performance. Performing in the waters of British Columbia’s west coast was particularly resonant following the Fukushima disaster (directly relating ‘our’ butoh back to its origins as a response to the horrors of Hiroshima and Nagasaki) – and these poems capture in their essence one woman’s quest to understand and relate to the built and the meltdown of ‘environment’ through a somatically, embodied ecological perspective.

Embedded and woven through these lines are references specific to choreographic elements of the piece, the location, the timing and/or local Indigenous Musqueam legends….from the Argentina vs. Germany World cup, to the sand dunes, to Xe-ls, the Creator… their imbrication enlivens the congruency of what was birthed on the beach, and the particulars are designed to conflate our understanding of the potency (and urgency) demanded of our/this place and time. My poetry is movement, simultaneously holding within its lexicon a tension between understanding, applicability, the local and the universal. My poetry is a butoh dance open to your interpretation. I offer it as a gift….