Senate Bill Bans Burma (in National News) Learning Center Reaches Out in Oakland to Mentally Ill (in Bay Area News) New Business Deal to Import Chinese High Tech Workers. (in Business) Missing Persons: The Existential Work of Hiroshi Teshigahara (in A&E) Emil Amok: What Are Tiger Privates Doing in My Soup? (in Opinion)

The Nijinsky of Butoh

Butoh master Akira Kasai. Photo by Teijirou Kamiyama.

Akira Kasai returns with new life

By Yafonne

“When a young person can dance hip hop, he does not need a god,” declares 58 year-old Japanese Butoh dance master Akira Kasai in an interview with AsianWeek at Sunflower Café in downtown San Francisco. Dressed in a funky striped black suit, with long orange-tinted hair and dark glasses, Kasai looks like a Japanese “Elvis” — a strikingly young, yet serious mystery man. “If you dance hip hop, you can see life from the inside. You can catch the body. If all [people] were dancing, we would not need any religion,” he says in fluent German, which his dancer Petra Vermeersch, 31, then translates to English.

Provocative statements such as these are natural expressions for Kasai, for whom the act of dancing is creating life itself. Arriving directly from Tokyo, Japan, Kasai’s return to the Bay Area June 2-10 marks the most anticipated Butoh event preceding the 7th San Francisco Butoh Festival/Japanese New Wave, which will take place July 28-August 18 at Theater Artaud.

After a two-year absence, Kasai will perform with European dancer Vermeersch in the premiere his latest work, Pollen (Kafun), a symbol of new life.

A dance pioneer and revolutionary whom critics and audiences alike have compared to Vaslav Nijinsky, ballet’s genius/madman, Akira Kasai has danced with the founders of Butoh in Japan, Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata. Initially aspiring to be an actor during college, his early dance training also included modern dance under Takaya Eguchi, a former student of German modern dance founder Mary Wigman and the Misako Miya Dance School, as well as classical ballet under Akinori Chiba.

Through dance, Kasai seeks to turn the “negation process of Butoh into one of affirmation,” or as he puts it, to “change the Dionysian forces of destruction into Appolonian energies of creation.” This concept has been with Kasai since childhood. Born in Japan during World War II to a severe, civil government judge father and a sensitive organist mother, Kasai’s life was filled with polarities from the start. Working with opposing elements — man versus woman, the East versus the West, Asia versus Europe — have become a recurring theme in many of his works.

But more important than the struggle and resolution between polarities is the element of human consciousness in Kasai’s dancing. Absolutely electrifying and terrifying to watch, Kasai’s stage presence has been described as “galvanizing,” like an “angel descended to earth.” Indeed, Kasai’s dance of consciousness has catapulted him to a very revolutionary understanding and approach to life. “It’s difficult to explain with words,” Kasai hesitates when queried on his dance power. “All material things can be seen from the outside. But with consciousness and life, you can only feel from the inside. Only by dance can you know life from the inside.”

According to Kasai, the word “revolution” in Chinese is a two-character word describing the changing of human nature — not just the changing of a society. “This is a very old concept in China. It’s the highest Tao,” explains Kasai. “Like the morning dew. In the morning dew you have the whole concentration of water and sunlight. In humans you have the whole concentration of earth and heavens. Humans are smaller than the cosmos, yet humans are much bigger than the cosmos. If you believe this, you can make a revolution in the cosmos through dance.”

This revolutionary connection of dance to human nature, however, proved to be a delicate line which Kasai crossed too far when he left Japan in 1979 to study eurythmy for six years in Germany. During his absence, Japan underwent a great economic crisis, which completely changed the culture and lifestyle of his people. “This was a very, very difficult period for me,” recalls Kasai. “When I returned to Japan, I was not able to make any attachments to the people and places I once knew. I tried very hard to understand Japan again. I felt estranged. I felt very lonely during this time. I did not fit. I did not connect.”

Incredibly enough, it took Kasai 14 years before he could really dance again. “I felt that if I cannot understand my own people, my own culture, how can I dance? It took a long time, a slow bit-by-bit process. When I can create a good human connection, then I can dance — not the other way around. Now I can very easily be in the Japanese community again. I feel a connection with the Americans, so that is why I can dance well here.”

Looking back over a lifetime of dancing, Kasai has this advice for young artists: “Have absolute freedom and right use of tradition. The body has two poles — tradition and freedom. It’s never about just one element. You need both.” For Kasai, the body is the nexus, a locus point for the union of all things. “Of course, dance is not religion,” he is quick to clarify. “Taoism and Christianity are all very different things. But in the body, you can unites all these different concepts. That’s the life-power of dance.”