Japon Series by Cécile Fontaine16 mm film, color, separate sound, 7', 1991
The dumpster left by World War II created the right environment to awaken new radical forms of art. At the edge of any convention appeared the Butoh dance, a minimal “dance of darkness” rooted in primordial and prelinguistic impulses. After the war the dancer's body ceased to be a well-tuned machine to become a resilient matter continuously responding to slow electric waves.
After redefining and subverting the conventional notions of dance, breaking all types of taboos in post-traumatic Japan, these “technician of the nervous system” migrated to France in search of a new source of unbounded energy known to be shared by newborns and poets. The bald masters of Butoh were now followers of a continuous cry started by Lautréamont, Artaud, Genet and, above all, Sade.
Around the 1980s, shots of an unknown documentary on “Sankai Juku" dance troupe were found in a garbage bin in Paris. These shots have become the core of one of Butoh's most extraordinary documents, the foun
d footage masterpiece “Japon Series”. This ultra vivid film was created by Cécile Fontaine by manipulating the 16 mm with scotch tape, a needle and a painter's knife, scratching and scraping the emulsion to reveal hidden colors in intense painterly compositions.
“fearsome technicians of the nervous system” (wikipedia)
Sunday, June 18, 11 pm
Oporto new entrance: Calçada Salvador Correia de Sá 42 , 2F, Lisbon
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