Interpretive Japanese Dance Sheds Light on Disease, Life and Death

Joseph Thomas was taking an acting class at the California Institute of Arts (CalArts), when his teacher introduced an avant-garde Japanese dance, called butoh, to the class.

The 20-year-old and his fellow acting students were asked to move across the room, from wall to wall, for a complete hour.

“The whole thing felt meaningless,” says Thomas. “But, I realized this was more about a journey of getting from one side of life to another.”

Butoh (pronounced boo’tō) is the name for a shared range of extreme movements executing a force of power. It classically involves playful imagery, with no set style, and is conceptual in idea. Often, it is performed in white body makeup.

“It is a subjective experience and doesn’t have to be performed for an audience,” says Thomas, a Moorestown native and moving into his junior year at CalArts.

First appearing in Japan after the Second World War, butoh emerged as a backlash against contemporary dance. The futuristic movements connect a performer with the past and the artist’s selfhood. At times, the artist revisits periods of life’s hardships—thus, the translation of butoh, “dance of darkness”—says Thomas. The result is both energizing and eerie.

Thomas will be performing a 35-minute program using butoh entitled White Light as part of the Philly Fringe Festival beginning Sept. 2. The Philly Fringe Festival, now in its 15^th year, gives artists a platform to showcase their works and expressions in art venues in Philadelphia’s downtown neighborhoods.

A two-part composition, Thomas’ first piece from White Light remains untitled and is an abstract improvisation asserting the ideas of consciousness and rituality with life and death.

The second piece called “David” was inspired by Thomas’ brother, who has battled Evans syndrome, a serious and rare autoimmune disorder in which the body makes antibodies that destroy the red and white blood cells, along with the platelets.

Evans syndrome has no known causes or identifiable genetic links.

“When David was about 12, I remember him being very sick and weak. One time he had a temperature of over 104 degrees,” Thomas recalls. “I wanted a better understanding of what David had endured. So, last summer I asked him to explain his experiences with Evans syndrome in an email to me.”

“David” takes place in a hospital, where David, now a rising senior at Clemson University, spent months. Thomas says performing the piece was a delusional experience for him—portraying a patient with an incurable disease, who undergoes an allergic reaction to medicine, was draining but therapeutic.

“I feel fortunate not having had to go through what David did…,” says Thomas. “So, through butoh, I can embody what he felt.”

Before majoring in acting at CalArts, Thomas performed at  in the play Noises Off and musicals Aida, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Seussical.

White Light will run for nine performances at the 954 Dance Movement Collective, 954 N. Eighth St., Philadelphia, from Sept. 2 until Sept. 17, as part of the Philly Fringe Festival. Tickets are $8.

For more information or to purchase tickets, go to whitelightfringe.weebly.com or call 215-413-1418.