Butoh dance festival – photo exhibition

As part of the recent second Butoh Dance Festival in McLeodganj, Moonpeak Espresso hosted an exhibition of pictures from the Subbody Butoh School. Butoh is a dance form which emerged in Japan in the mid-20th century, emphasising spontaneous over conscious movement. The genre, which rejects both Japanese and Western classical forms, deploys playful and grotesque imagery to explore taboo subjects, and is traditionally ‘performed’ in white body makeup with slow, hyper-controlled motion. The term subbody stands for subconscious body, emphasising that the butoh taught at the Jogibara school finds its roots in the subconscious world. Dancers draw on subjective experiences stored in their bodies to generate movement.