It is most unusual for a choreographer to shout "Stop dancing!" to the African dancers he is working with.
To confuse matters further, Boaz Barkan claims: "Butoh isn't a dance. You have to live it. We are trying to show a certain existence".
Fair enough. Anyone who has been exposed to this Japanese form will know there is a lot of introspection involved.
That is also true of Down Flesh Road, which this accomplished Israeli-born contemporary dancer and Butoh artist has been creating, with his wife Anika, at Benoni's Sibikwa Arts Centre. For the last three weeks this couple, based in Denmark, have spent their return visit consolidating what they taught last year. The fascinating In the Wake of the Body, which was the culmination of their 2007 residency, is now succeeded by Down Flesh Road.
The Barkans are demanding "complete hyper-engagement" in a quest for authentic expression. The eight Sibikwa graduates (four of whom participated In the Wake of the Body) have been put through a strenuous physical and emotional creation process. One of their exercises has been "really feeling a chicken".
"We create complexities and we have to do five or six things at the same time," is the explanation. Some of the images, which deal with death and destruction, can be horrific. "Butoh can also be joyous," adds Barkan. "It doesn't always have to be grotesque. Joyfulness, like an orgasm, isn't always pretty."
He is relishing being reunited with the SA performers. One of his major discoveries is that "there is an absolutely dramatic difference in the understanding of the words transformation, transcendence, through movement. And the physicality is different. This time I have made it quite explicit. We are working with raw, basic, Butoh imagery."
The contrasts between the preparation for African traditional and Western dance, aside from Butoh, have enthralled him. He is equally delighted by the South Africans' communal township background and rich creativity.
Barkan's own artistic background speaks volumes. His dance training, when he was 17 and a soldier in the Israeli army, initially comprised ballet classes in Tel Aviv with Bat-Dor (directed by South African Jeannette Ordman). When his parents moved to Los Angeles he followed them and enrolled at California Institute of the Arts. The training was a disappointment. That all changed when he was 22 and met Oguri, who was leading Min Tanaka's Body Weather Workshop in LA.
"I became his shadow. I was drawn to Butoh, because it was sophisticated, complex, independent, thorough and human". What also appealed to the young rebel was: "Butoh's sense of community and that it wasn't based on an aesthetic. The sense of creating it together in trying to break boundaries. In Zulu traditional dance they push each other. Butoh is a subtle way of reaching out. You have to lose the body. As Oguri says: 'then the whole of existence follows'."
Barkan dropped out before graduating after his body started changing, because of the Butoh, and he had performed a life-threatening piece in which he was connected to electrical current.
After moving to New York and working with Body Weather there and in Japan, he met Anika Kristensen - another Min Tanaka disciple. Apart from their teaching at Denmark's circus school, Barkan works in New York and, for the past decade, has been part of post-modern pioneer Anna Halprin's famous dance collective.
He is currently touring Europe with a handpicked cast in … & alters parades & changes, replays a reconstruction of parades & changes created in 1965.
Down Flesh Road will be performed to a soundscape sung by 10 singer-musicians under the musical direction of Neo Leleka, who has scored traditional African instruments and percussion.
This particular adventure began when Barkan, who is distantly related to Sibikwa co-director Phyllis Klotz, first met Sibikwa actors in LA. That first impression stayed with him and 12 years later he realised it was time to reconnect with those singular energies.
What makes this exchange even more incredible is that the project hasn't received any formal funding. "We keep trying … There are ways," he mused enigmatically. So Butoh-esque.
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