In 2017, after taking a workshop with photographer Manuel Vason in Mexico City, I started a curious project I named just “Photo-performance”, with the aim of photographing my inner ghosts during the live movement of my Butoh performance. I published in my photography page the resulting photographs of the first exercises I made.
Since then my idea of working with photography during my live performance has evolved in a different direction, specially with the results of my performance event “The Inner Passing of Time” in Guangzhou, China in January 2021, a work where photography is an extended part of that live performance. There, I could work with the photographs taken by different photographers and create stories coming from the different perception of time they caught during my performance event. The time of the performance is extended and it’s still going till the moment the new spectators watch the photographers’s stories.
That for sure was not anymore catching ghosts during the performance.
When I had the opportunity to explore again The Inner Passing of Time in Dali in November 2021, I was not looking to use photography at all, but the photographs that Canadian photographer Husain Amer shot of my performance made me change my idea. At the end of the show he told me, “As soon as you started dancing I couldn’t stop shooting. I didn’t have the time to change settings, so many photographs could have the wrong focus or light. I’m going to give you the USB with all the photographs and you do with them as you wish.”
When I saw the files I found many interesting images with a clear focus, light, etc, -very good as documents of this specific show. But it was the others that attracted me the most: those photographs that were not clear, that were not focused, those that caught the outer movement blurring the image, but most important to me, those what I believe caught the “inner movement” of my work on stage.
I decided to work with those “errors” with Francis Bacon’s work in mind when processing each of the photos. Bacon’s images were a very important influence in Hijikata’s inspiration for his Butoh-notation, and it is now a very good inspiration for this series of the project I’ve named “Baconian bodies”.
Then I could notice that I was working again with those “ghosts” of my first exploration with the Photo-performance; those photographs of 2017 also were “Baconian bodies”. I saw that the line of this exploration is still there and I’m happy that is getting clear as a project. That’s why I started a new website that join the two projects (and those that come in the near future) to show the results:
I know – if you are not like me – it could be tiring to do this, but the action of making sense of the past throughout a continual revision is, for me, of the same importance as planning the future. So, I’m doing this.
After a 2018 full of attempts and a few successes (The Year I Left Behind), the year that’s just ended was full of creative work and presentations, full of achievements.
January
I received a photograph, taken in the nineties in Mexico City when I was working in “Escenología”, a performing arts research institute and publishing house directed by researcher Edgar Ceballos, where my dreams of being part of a theatre company that provided the group atmosphere and creativity inspired by Jerzy Grotowski’s and the Odin Teatret’s work were almost realized. What I did achieve during those years was a very powerful and deep technical and ethical education coming from many sources linked to Grotowski and The Odin Teatret (we worked with Eugenio Barba, Julia Varley and Roberta Carrieri, just to name a few), but especially our principal and main training coach, Jaime Soriano, himself a direct disciple and collaborator with Grotowski. The contact with the different researchers Edgar Ceballos was meeting and publishing (in books and magazines) gave me, of course, a performing arts culture I was dreaming to have. Watching these photos pushed me to address the problems of working in Guangzhou; this energy and impulse came directly from the source, no doubt about it.
These are two different photographs, both with the same spirit I was talking before: one, a general photo taken when Teatro Potlach came to Escenología to have a look at our work and give us some feedback; the second one, taken during the rehearsal of a piece we never premiered. Of course, the photos are cropped a bit so you can see me better.
January/February/March
Japan again!
I was expecting this moment since 2014. I had saved enough money (Japan is super expensive) for the flight, accommodation, food and fees. I was close to Tokyo (Guangzhou is less than 4 hours away by plane). I really needed to see master Yoshito Ohno and dance with him again at the Kazuo Ohno Dance Studio. And I wanted to get in touch again with all the other masters that are working in Tokyo: the great Natsu Nakajima, Yuri and Seisaku (there I had the opportunity to meet and train with Yumiko Yushioka), and Kudo Taketeru. I had the chance to have a basic workshop with Takao Kawaguchi about his experience with “About Kazuo Ohno”, and a surprisingly interesting class with two colleagues from Yoshito’s workshops, Mutsumi and Neiro.
My goal was to have a total immersion in the current Japanese Butoh world, and you bet I did. I took lessons almost every day (sometimes two different classes in different parts of the city or between two cities in one day) from the end of January till the beginning of March. I went to see dozens of performances, listening to conferences and talks, homages, exhibitions, and I even paid two visits to the Hijikata Butoh Institute at Keiko University where researcher Takashi Morishita gave me all the facilities to feel in that place like in my own personal library. One day, on my way to the Hijikata Institute, I passed by an area of old bookshops, where I found a good edition of the book “Ba-ra-kei: Ordeal by Roses” by photographer Eiko Hosoe, with images of Yukio Mishima – both very important figures for Butoh in Japan.
My last day I interviewed Master Yoshito Ohno about his work life and his ideas of an uncertain future after his heart attack, which partially paralyzed his body.
At the moment I was writing this year’s revision I learned that – exactly one year after this visit to Japan – master Yoshito Ohno, the dancer who with Tatsumi Hijikata gave the first Butoh performance in history, son of the great Kazuo Ohno, has passed away. I am sad and I have a terrible feeling of being lost. I know that, little by little I will only feel thankful for all that I learned by listening to him and dancing with him. My thoughts and love are with his wife, his daughter Keiko and all the Ohno family, as well as with my colleagues, friends and people close to the Kazuo Ohno Dance Studio.
My life in Japan literally nourished on Butoh.
Of course, I cannot show here my whole experience in Japan, but these photographs will help me share part of it. Also, there are many other posts in this blog about my experiences during that trip:
March came with a surprise trip to Mongolia. I probably don’t have much to say about me and Butoh during this trip, but there was a lot about this culture I’ve always been interested in, especially its throat singing and the shamanism of the north of the country. Both (throat singing and shamanism) are very much the source of performing arts as a biological body in performance
The highlight of that trip was a shamanistic ritual on frozen Khövsgöl Lake. You can read about my whole experience in the post I dedicated to it. (link)
In Ulaanbaatar I went to listen to throat singing at a very tourist-oriented performance. Nevertheless, the technique was there and it was spectacular. I was also lucky that, during a camel festival in the south, in the village of Bulgam Sum, in the Gobi desert, I got to listen to some villagers singing some improvised traditional chants in an ankle bones match. You can listen to part of the chanting by following this link: https://soundcloud.com/gustavo-thomas-teatro/canto-y-juego-gobi-mongolia-2019
April
While I was preparing two Butoh pieces and one photography exhibition for June, I went to see one of China’s iconic natural marvels, staying at Jima village, near the city of Yangshuo in the the Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region. There I did two interesting improvisations with incredible natural settings as background. Sunsets those days were spectacular, so I timed one of those improvisations to happen as the sun set. I can say it was magical, because it really was.
May
In May I devoted myself to the creative process of the performances and the photo exhibition, and also added the task of transcribing the recorded interview I did to master Yoshito Ohno and then translating it to Spanish. While doing some research on Yoshito Ohno, I found some other interviews and materials of his autobiography that helped me understand the important role this man has played in the creation and promotion of Butoh since the very beginning. I started posting some of those findings as quotations and commentaries on my own personal experience of training at his side.
The Mexican Consulate made good on its promise and offered me its events hall once more to show the second phase of my photo-performance project “Pride, Chinese Style”, which this time I called “Qipao, A Gender Game”. Like the year before, my collaboration took place during the LGTBQ Film Festival different consulates in Guangzhou organize. My performance and the photography exhibition were in fact the opening to one of the film screenings. This second phase gave me the opportunity to work again with Wing (Ho Hoiwing, en mandarín He Hairong, 河海荣), this time as male model wearing a qipao, stepping up from documentary photography to a stage concept: what’s the fuzz when a man wears a women’s iconic dress? The results were pretty good, I think, and the reaction of the people who attended was fantastic.
The photo-gallery shows first the photographs I showed at the exhibition, and then the photos of the performance at the consulate.
July
As you probably already know, LGTBQ public activities are prohibited in China. That’s why it was only possible to show my project “Pride Chinese Style” inside of a foreign consulate in Guangzhou. I was advised that it was possible to present my exhibition and performance outside the consulates if I announce it as a private event without an open public publicity or ticket sale. So, I did it. This second presentation of Qipao, A Gender Game was at Jueyuan 1985, a beautiful 1920s brick house in the historical neighborhood of Dongshankou. The performance was a little different from the first show at the Mexican Consulate, Wing and Atta (my model and the one of the dancer directors of the Tango house) participated mixing their Tango with my Butoh. I was lucky that a good photographer was there to take these beautiful documents of that night.
August
Invited by Jasmine, an enthusiastic Chinese woman who owns a few independent venues in Guangzhou, to do a performance at her Café Theatre “Zhile” (知乐), I started my new project (at that moment, I was envisioning one called “Study of the Properties of Water”). I worked on my own and also had some meetings with Michael Garza, a friend and United States bassoonist who plays for the Guangzhou Symphonic Orchestra. I had to put a brief pause on that work to make a trip to the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, to an area close to the borders with Pakistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and home to one of the most culturally vigorous – yet politically conflicted – Muslim minorities in China, the Uyghurs. The region is known also for its amazing natural beauties. On my way from Tashkorgan to Kashgar, near the lake Bulungkul, I did a short improvised performance with a background of amazing icy blue waters and enormous white sand dunes and snow-capped mountains.
August/September
Michael Garza and me decided to apply ourselves to the creative process during all of September and up to our presentation, after the National Day holidays. I decided to fuse together two projects, “Study of the Properties of Water” and “The Passing of Time”, and this was the long final name of the work. Michael worked on 10 very powerful pieces for bassoon, some classics, some by contemporary Asian composers, while I worked on my inner story with inspiration coming from paintings of different states of water by Chinese Sung dynasty painter Ma Yuan and the idea/impulse of time passing inside my body.
Here you have some documents about that intense creative process.
October
“Study of the Properties of Water and the Passing of Time” was performed at Zhile Art Space in Ersha Island, Guangzhou. Our 50 minute-long bassoon and Butoh performance was done before a full house and with what I can say great success. The attention and response of the public was deep and emotional, and the Q&A session afterwards passionate. I totally loved the experience.
The photographs were taken by several of the spectators present.
November
At long last! “Languid Bodies”, my Butoh and Video piece created in Mexico City in 2014 together with video artist Omar Ramírez. With one failed attempt in 2018 (when the show was cancelled by the police an hour before the performance due to a misperception of its content), in November 2019 I presented it at the Mexican Consulate as part of the commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination Violence against Women. Undoubtedly, no context would have been more ideal for this kind of piece.
The events hall of the Mexican Consulate is not a theatre in a proper sense, but I managed to transform it into a very basic stage, with some unavoidable visibility problems. The public was a mix of foreigners and Chinese. It made me happy that the video created by Omar, even though projected in a small format, made a very strong impression in the public and was well appreciated and even put at the same level of relevance as the Butoh piece itself. I’m personally very fond of this work and I felt more than blessed by the response to it here in China.
December
After an invitation by Jasmine, the manager at Zhile Art Space, to participate at the Guangzhou Outdoor Arts Festival (lucky me!), I created “Masks”, a 50-minute Butoh and physical theatre performance. The GOA Festival 2019 attracted hundreds of spectators every day during all December, and the day of my presentation was no exception. I was afraid to face the monster, but that was no monster, it was a beautiful creature, attentive and open to be touched.
The night after the performance I wrote:
“Deeply satisfied with Masks’ presentation yesterday night at the GOA festival in Guangzhou. A very special outdoor setting, I would say spectacular. A huge audience (something like 400 people), attentive and with great response to my work. It was broadcast online throughout China on two different channels and, from what I know about just one of those channels, more than 4000 people were watching the performance.“
Also, there was even a Korean artist among the public that drew what she saw during the performance.
I’m so grateful to Jasmine, my favourite Chinese producer, and to AG, the director of the GOA Festival, who believed in my work. I feel I’m a very lucky person.“
And the festival article reviewing the performance was very kind to me:
“Mexican Butoh artist Gustavo Thomas, who currently resides in Guangzhou, presented the piece “Masks”, created by him specifically for GOA. The artist’s mysterious and strong cross-cultural performance firmly held the attention of those present, from children to adults. His piece received enthusiastic applause.“
The year ahead is – as is usual in my life – unpredictable, but I’m feeling that I’m learning (and starting to use what I’ve learned) to work in a very unpredictable surrounding. I have at least three projects in the making and some collaborations with other artists.
When I arrived to Guangzhou at the beginning of this year 2018 I was introduced almost immediately to the LGTBQ world of the region thanks to a reception the General Consul of Belgium in Guangzhou, Joris Selden, and his husband Fabio Melchiorri, gave to celebrate the beginning of a new year. At that reception I had the opportunity to meet – among many others – two very interesting Chinese personalities: Wing and Ryan, in their English names. Their stories opened to me the world of some LGTBQ organizations in the city, working with all the joy and complications that living openly as a gay person means within a culture that slowly and little by little is opening its doors to minorities.
Ryan is one of the people in charge of Zhitong, an organization that helps and gives advise mostly to members of the gay community. Wing is an energetic person who organizes a monthly LGTBQ session called Tango Queer at the Tango academy, where he learns and practices.
In China it is prohibited to make a public display of LGTBQ pride (parade, rights demonstration, gatherings without police permission). Any celebration must be in private, as it is the Tango session, or very close monitored by the government, as it is with Zhitong.
The two groups, each in its own way, offer to me a Chinese-style vision of the melting pot of colors that is the LGTBQ rainbow. They’re proud Chinese, proud of their orientation and their personal choices. They are fighters expressing their Pride in their unique ways.
I decided to start my first photo-performance project in Guangzhou with them, about them, and about the people they gather and work with, watching and analyzing their way of being LGTBQ, but from my own perspective, that of a Photo and Butoh performer man married to another man in a society like Mexico’s and who, after many years of legal and social rejection, has opened almost completely to the different possibilities of gender.
About the project
This project, which will continue to grow and develop during the three years I plan to live in Guangzhou, includes documentary photography, digital interventions and Butoh performances inspired by the daily work and life of these two groups, as well as others that may offer me access to their unique worlds and spaces.
In this starting first phase, which I’ve called “Document”, I’m working with portraits and images that, by themselves and without further embellishment, tell us the stories of the protagonists of these two groups, Zhitong and Tango Queer, with a focus on their places, their bodies and their movements, in their simple and daily tasks and activities. There is no digital intervention yet, but a small bite of Butoh through some improvisations with Wing and Juan from the Tango Queer group.
My idea for the Butoh work in this project is what some people call “intervention”, going directly to the real places my subjects are working and do some improvisations while they are doing their daily tasks, and probably, if that works, doing a whole performance mixing my surreal Butoh performance with the real time of their normal life. Of course, working with Tango Queer was easier, as they are performers too, but more difficult with Zhitong whom members are not close to any artistic attitude. It is a risky adventure, and I’ll see how this goes.
The first show
What it was a great surprise was that the Mexican Consulate in Guangzhou gave me the opportunity to show the results of the fist phase of the project taking part of the LGTBQ month celebrations in the city. They were organizing, with many other consulates and organizations in the city, a film festival around the LGTBQ subject, so they thought it was a good moment to show my work and it really was. We prepared a photo exhibition and a Tango and Butoh improvisation for the opening. A kind of success because they asked for another show one week later.
Even I’ve built a website around the project ( Pride Chinese Style ) I’d like to share the same information and images here in my Butoh Blog, specially to keep track of it as part of my Butoh world.
DOCUMENTS
Phase 1, Document, “Zhitong”
(Photographs for exhibition)
Proud colleagues
Armchair
I’m strong no. 1
I’m strong no. 2
I feel comfortable
Zhitong
Colleagues
Working space no. 1
I’m strong no. 3
Working space no. 2
Phase 1, Document, “Tango Queer”
(Photographs for exhibtion)
Embrace
Wing
Concentration
Tense fingers
Deep looking
Atmosphere
The forgotten heels
Crossing legs
Tango Step
Dancing legs
Touching shoes
Inclination
Swirling leg
Touching hand
Phase 1, Documents/ Butoh.
(Butoh performance preparation) *(1)
EXHIBITION AND PERFORMANCES
Finally some images of the two presentations we had at the gallery of the Mexican Consulate on June 21st and June 26th. You’ll notice that the name of this exhibition was “Rainbow in Chinese Style”; the consulate asked to avoid the word “Pride” because could cause problems with Chinese authorities; I thought this was not an issue that affected the body of the project. *(2)
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*(1) All photographs in this section was taken by Zangtai Taizo and processed by Gustavo Thomas.
*(2) Photographs taken by the public, by people from the Mexican Consulate and stills I extracted from a video.
After some weeks with enormous work around our first Photoperformance exhibition in China I gave me some time to process one of the videos recorded during my Butoh improvisation under Dadao bridge in Ersha Island.
As I usually do when processing the videos of my improvs, the music you listen to was added after. It always surprises me how it can fit with the movement, giving to the performance a new, even twisted atmosphere, from the original.
If you watch this on a mobile phone screen probably the quality of some details, hands and facial gestures for example, will be lost, so I advice watching the video on a bigger screen.
In two weeks I’ll be performing my Butoh along with two Chinese Tango dancers during the opening of my first photoperformance exhibition in China. I’ll hope to record some material and show it to you here later.
After three months trying to adapt myself to the Chinese city of Guangzhou, looking for a place for training and creation, I could find two or three sites around the city to perform my improvisations.
This first one I’m talking about now was very close to my new home, in Ersha Island, under a highway bridge with exceptional perspective and bizarre good lighting, almost as if was thought to be used as a performance venue. You know me, I couldn’t resist doing something there.
I chose one Saturday evening. The heat was -at 6 pm- just bearable and I only had to fight with some mosquitoes, but my main concern actually was not the weather conditions but the police. China has a policy that prohibits any kind of public manifestation without permission from the police, permission that could never come, because of the bureaucracy or just because someone doesn’t want to have any problem asking for it to his superiors. Anyway, it was a question of luck: if the police didn’t show and the street surveillance cameras were not recording anything I could get along without any problem; but, if the police arrived then it would depend of the criteria of the guard, he would let me go with my performance or ask me to leave or even he would arrest me.
As my Butoh improvisation is not a performance organized to be public (it is just done at a public area), and I assume it is not political, my bet was, with not much risk, that I would get along with it without any altercation.
The police did arrive in the middle of my performance, but for some reason the guard just looked at me while passing by and he didn’t stop nor did anything, and walked away. So, I was lucky, the first test passed without a problem.
People passed by and stood for a little time and then went away too, some took photographs, and even a lady stopped by and started to give some advice about where to do the performance with better light while taking some photographs with her phone. What I loved was to see how some riding bicycles got attracted by what I was doing and changed their way to see better. I was all alive and fresh, exactly what I look in my Butoh improvs around the world.
I didn’t use any make up ( I didn’t want to attract much attention) or wore a thong, but I did wore some of my traditional black dresses, a net, and a Japanese mask. I put not very loud music and I stayed performing almost in the same area without doing much fuss around. I really loved the results, at least in photographic images.
We’ll see if I keep that impression after I process the video.
(Thanks, as always, to my personal cameraman Zangtai Taizo for being there once again.)
Gustavo Thomas Butoh Blog 