Art
Artists of the Darkness and Light
While Tatsumi Hijikata and Eikoh Hosoe reflected the countercultural mood of Japan’s postwar avant-garde, the trauma of World War II is inscribed in both artists’ aesthetics.
butoh
Art
Harlem 'Hot House' Reimagines Heaven and Hell
Artists have transformed a vacant townhouse in Spanish Harlem for New York's 2014 Frieze weekend. The temporary exhibition, Hot House, spans three different levels loosely corresponding to the three parts of Dante's Divine Comedy (1308–21): the basement is the Inferno, the middle section of the hous
Performance
Butoh, the Body, and Perception
There’s a moment in your first life-drawing class where your perception shifts and you start looking at the naked body in front of you differently. At least that was my experience. Instead of feeling uncomfortable with the nudity or paying attention to judgments and assumptions about the person in f
Performance
Spectral: The Ghost Dance of Butoh
Despite the setting — a small stage filled with nine dancers — there was a feeling of separateness and sadness. The Vangeline Theater, a Butoh dance group, celebrated its 10th anniversary on February 1 and 2 at the Triskelion Arts Aldous Theater; both nights were sold out, with more people waiting i
Performance
Men Made of Marble
Every now and then, if lucky, you’ll encounter a mode of performance or an artwork that simultaneously requires and supplies a kind of attention that you didn't even know existed. Sitting in an otherworldly, attentive, stupor, I had that experience watching marble white humans covered in a thin laye