Overview

Ko Murobushi (1947-2015) began dancing after he met Tatsumi Hijikata (the founder of butoh dance in 1968, and remained active as a dancer from that point on, both in Japan and abroad. Through photographs, posters, videos and his own writings, the exhibition traces the trajectory of his explorations of dance.
Murobushi’s reflections on dance and on the body cannot be contained within the understanding of “butoh” as a genre: they go far beyond dance theory and practice to ask fundamental questions about the nature of the body and of society. The goal of the exhibition is to offer a reexamination of the field of dance itself, using the traces of dance and thought Murobushi left behind.
The exhibition covers multiple periods of his career: the early 1970s, and his time with butoh company Dairakudakan, as well as the period after he left that collective to form his own company, Sebi (exhibited in sections respectively titled “La Communauté Inavouable” and “La Saison Violente”); the early 1980s, when he moved to Europe, and gave numerous performances while being constantly on the move (in a section of the exhibition titled “Wandering bodies”); and finally, the 2000s, when he returned to Japan and further deepened his understanding of dance (exhibited in a section titled “Faux Pas”).