Dance is immeasurable. It’s not only dance—there is something unique to dance that resists measurement. That is why there are dancers who live, think, and pursue dance as something immeasurable. It also means that the dancing body itself is immeasurable. If not only a single body, but also sensations, memories, and thoughts are entangled and dancing together, then each of them—and the whole as well—must also be immeasurable.

Dancers may dance while questioning dance itself. Yet it is uncertain whether such a thing as “dance itself” truly exists. Dance is always open to and connected with things beyond itself. It is permeated by the infinite—by the world, by society and nature, by human beings and their lives, by countless living things and objects. Ko Murobushi continued to dance, pursuing dance in dialogue with all of these. Dance, being so radically open to the world, is boundless. It can never be fully achieved—only continually pursued. He kept on dancing, murmuring to himself, “What is this discursiveness?”

Murobushi ceaselessly moved back and forth between dance and language. Between them, an intense friction seemed to persist—a continual collision, penetration, fusion, and tension. He ruminated on, examined, and critically diagnosed the direct and indirect influences he had received from Tatsumi Hijikata.

Hijikata’s Butoh creation was accompanied by original and agile poetic thoughts from the early days. As a remarkable example of the chiasm between dance and language, the case of ballet and the writings of Nijinsky, which Hijikata also noted, comes to mind. The verbal creation poured into Yameru Maihime (Ailing Dancer), after he stopped performing on stage, was necessary for the genesis of Butoh. The language which Hijikata forged was itself the process of pursuing and discovering the Butoh body, and it was neither an explanation nor a theory of dance, neither a script nor a synopsis, nor a work notebook nor a memoir of a Butoh dancer. The creations of Kazuo Ohno and Akira Kasai were no exceptions; Butoh was often realized in close connection with the dense vibrations and lines of force that penetrate the meaning of language, which itself is also dance. In this regard, Tatsumi Hijikata stood out, and there was certainly a process of the genesis of the Butoh-language that belonged to him alone.

Ko Murobushi tried to catch the thoughts which existed at the core of Hijikata’s creation, while reacting sensitively to this linguistic act of Hijikata. Hijikata himself responded to Murobushi’s pursuit and described Murobushi’s direction, in a beautiful phrase, as “fierce unworking” (“The Butoh of Mummy – Ko Murobushi”).

Then, what is this “unworking,” which seems to have a deep relation to both Hijikata and Murobushi? What is unworking for Butoh? Isn’t it the strong non-sense that pierces the immeasurableness of dance?

Besides the Shusei, which includes the essence of this pursuit, and the open texts in the published archives, there are still unpublished writings of Murobushi. Among them, he sometimes directed the force of negation toward existing dance and even his own dance, and looked for a way of revival each time, as if declaring a death sentence to dance. He never abandoned the motifs inspired by Butoh, but his dance of unworking had already thrown away every form. Material, particles, melting, collapsing, deviating, and so on are always pursued.

Blanchot’s term faux-pas (misstep) has become a kind of keyword. Deviation from the pas (steps) of dance, falling down, disarticulation, and failing to die. Hijikata’s phrase, “Butoh is the standing dead body,” became overly famous, but it never means the dance of the dead (danse macabre). It is the dance of the living dead, the dance of becoming a corpse, the dance of anti-realization.

The inspiration of early Murobushi is violent. “Pain and intoxication beyond endurance make me lose myself. What lies at the boundary of egolessness and stupor is also the origin of Butoh. I kill myself on the dance stage. But I am immortal and I revive.” While maintaining this inspiration, he repeatedly conducted lessons during his long collaboration with dancers, directing subtle attention to extraordinary gestures, states, and transformations, and continued to pursue the unworking of dance.

Pursuing the immeasurable, infinite dance also means perceiving, examining, and experiencing various limits (“the edges, borders, corners, peripheries…”)—and at times, passing through them. While the body’s capabilities are, of course, finite, the body itself can also be infinite. Its forms and forces pass through endless transformations and modes. Even a single line of gesture contains multiple directions, branches, and vibrations. I have witnessed moments when, in the slow gestures of Murobushi, countless facets seemed to shimmer as he transitioned from a state of convulsion to another state of movement.

The attempt to exhibit the trajectory of this exploration would be an experiment in opening a finite space to the infinite. At the same time, the very meaning of “limit” itself must be transformed.

Translated by Hanako Takayama