The butterfly and the red string

Dancer Yuri Matsumaru presents a new choreography inspired by her intimate story and tells us about love, loss and connection in a butoh performance. In Japan, butterflies are considered sacred creatures that carry souls, and fated lovers are said to be joined by an invisible red string, tied around each other’s little finger. Join us for a poetic and delicate evening.

Butoh is a dance style created and developed by Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno in Japan in the 1960s. Both Hijikata and Ohno studied modern dance, which itself was the antithesis of Western ballet-like aesthetics, which emphasized discipline, harmony, and stability.

Butoh, is oriented to the pre-modern and indigenous body, with its twisted figure and low center of gravity, creating a world that was radical, obscene, chaotic, and fascinating. Hijikata describes butoh as “a corpse that has stood on the edge of life“. Butoh developed as an avant-garde art form, interacting with writers and poets, including Yukio Mishima and Tatsuhiko Shibuya, as well as underground theater.