Japanese Butoh Troupe Byakkosha Causes a Sensation in Taiwan

Source: The Awakening of Body Training
From: Guling Street Avant-Garde Theatre Culture Report, No. 43
Date: January 10, 2015. Author: Wang Mo-lin

Before the Japanese butoh troupe Byakkosha’s sensational visit to Taiwan in 1986, the concept of “the body” as a discourse had yet to emerge here. Prior to that, we had only the Lan Ling Theatre Workshop’s American-style psychodrama methods — massage and role-playing — as performance training. It was not until Byakkosha performed in Taiwan that Wang Mo-lin began introducing butoh and the body-training approaches of Tadashi Suzuki and others in Taiwan’s newspapers and magazines, and only then did “the body” as an aesthetic concept for theatre slowly emerge.

Byakkosha performing on the streets of Ximending (reproduced from Human Realm Magazine, Issue 7)

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External Links

• Butoh (Wikipedia)
• Taiwan Dance Chronicle ’80 (National Taiwan Dance Education Museum)
• Taiwan’s Little Theatre — Past, Present and Future (Tsai Ming-yeh)
• Multiple Possession: Tatsumi Hijikata and the Internal Plane Theatre of the Twin Subject (Kung Cho-chün)
• The Revolt of the Flesh: Tatsumi Hijikata Documents Retrospective (China Times)