“It exists beyond duality - where darkness and light are not fixed states, and one always contains the seeds of the other. Beauty can be ugly, and ugly can be beautiful. Broken things can become catalysts for transformation.” Yumi Umiumare

My personal encounter with Butoh began in the mid-90s in Hobart while attending a dance workshop led by Yumi Umiumare. More recently, I joined the Butoh community in Melbourne with the privileged role as visual artist, set/costume designer and workshop faciltator. ButohOut is a dance collective, a creative hub and a cultural exchange. It forges collaborative projects with dancers, choreographers and musicians to co-create works that blend movement, installation, voice and visual art. In the public performance and workshops, themes of darkness, chaos and anarchy are welcomed as catalysts for extreme bodily expression and visual stimuli. Participants play with reconstructed costumes, oversized effegies, skeleton bones, painted pointy hats and whatever goes bump in the night, whatever brings the darkness light.

In 2025, ButohOut’s production, Out of Order ButohBAR, part of Asia Topa Festival, featured Butoh master, Atsushi Takenouchi and sound artist Hiroko Komiya. I was privileged to have the opportunity to dive deeper into the Butoh world through spontaneous backyard performances and rapturous late-night conversations.