To imagine: there is nothing in the universe. Not even the universe itself. Or perhaps only a single point exists, a minimum body, and nothing else. A trembling point, ready to move, yet still motionless. No other presence, no other sight. The point trembles there, holding the potential for motion.
     When it moves, a line is drawn in its wake. It may be straight, it may curve, or meander like a serpent. The point’s movement is not predetermined. How does it move, how far does it go? Finite, or infinite?
     Then, the line shifts in various directions. And thus, a surface takes shape. But the path of the line remains uncertain. It could form a flat plane, or perhaps a spherical surface, a twisted, distorted plane, or something far more weird. Perhaps the folds of the earth, the countless waves of the sea, the craters of the ocean floor, or the caverns of stalactites.
     The space arises from the movements of points, lines, surfaces, and bodies. Each space is drawn anew with every moment, a one-time-only space.
     It is Leibniz and Paul Klee who have sketched the problem of space in this manner. Leibniz, known as one of the founders of topology, offers a concept of space with several key features.
     First, space cannot be separated from what exists within it. There is no space independent of bodies. Second, everything that exists is in motion. All things are caught in the continuous variation (variation continue). Stillness is but motion at the lowest speed, a motion that holds only virtual velocity and direction. The things are moving in ways unperceivable by human senses. Third, space is generated along with motion. And with each new moment, it is generated as something singular, each time unique.
     In Leibniz’s philosophy, there exists the principle known as the Principle of Sufficient Reason. This principle has two aspects: first, “why is there something rather than nothing?” and second, “why is it this, and not something else?” Why is my body this body, and not like another person’s body? Why am I this “I”, and not another? Why is this wall pierced by countless wounds that resemble bullet scars? Why is this motion? Leibniz seeks to understand the cause that generates each body as this body at every moment, the cause that makes a thing singular. For him, each individual thing holds its own singularity of existence, its “thisness” (“heccéité” in French).
     Furthermore, he applies the Principle of Sufficient Reason to space itself. Why space exists?, and why this space, and not some other? Leibniz rejects the concept of a universal, absolute space that remains the same everywhere. Instead, he asserts that a singular space is generated in relation to the motion of bodies, and the relations between them. Each time, genesis of each space.
     Leibniz refers to the motion and trajectory of bodies as “tractus”, a Latin term meaning “drawing”. Every body moves, and in its movement, it draws space. Just as water is drawn from a well, bodies draw motion and space from their potentiality. What kind of motion, what kind of space is drawn out remains undetermined. The bodies tremble, suspended in their unknown potentiality.
Leibniz’s examples are profoundly intriguing. In his mathematical writing, he poses this question: If an arch explodes and falls toward the ground, what kind of surface would it trace?
     Explosion. Countless particles of dust, a swarm of fragments colliding with one another. As the identity of the arch is shattered to pieces, the dispersed dust and fragments leave their mark, and trace etching space. Space does not exist beyond the movements of these innumerable bodies-in-movements.
     It seems like Leibniz carries within him a touch of madness. For him, the motions and spaces are not regular, nor normative, but sometimes even destructive. Known for his theory of possible worlds, Leibniz does not assume that the space of a possible world is identical to the space we inhabit. Just as he imagined countless possible worlds, he thinks of an infinite variety of possible spaces. Space is not necessarily three-dimensional; it may be two, or even one-dimensional. It might be a space wonderfully warped like that of Alice’s land.
     Leibniz and Paul Klee remind me of dance: through movement, the dancer generates space. The arm moves and comes to rest, a single finger suspended in the air. It is this motion, this trembling, that draws space and changes the entire atmosphere of the scene.
     Or perhaps, the dancer stirs the air around. Air is a body too, and it moves slowly or rapidly, horizontally or spirally. The space drawn by the dancer expands outward, together with the air, into the world, drawing the world. And suddenly, the air becomes heavier. The air surrounding the body is now liquid. The dancer moves meticulously within it. Waves of motion ripple outward. No repetition is possible, as every dancer knows it.
     What is fascinating in Leibniz and Klee is how the motion of body always accompanies a change in dimensionality. From a point that has no dimension, a one-dimensional line is born; from a one-dimensional line, a two-dimensional surface emerges. When a three-dimensional object moves, four or five dimensions emerge (though we cannot represent them, might we feel them).
     Motion does not occur within the same dimension; it involves the very movement of dimensionality itself, a shift to different dimensions. The movement of the body carves out new dimensions. In dance, these dimensions are not only spatial but also sensory. What is it, the creation of new dimensions of sensation? What is the experience of time and space when a sense unfolds?
     Furthermore, if we trace Leibniz’s process in reverse, the number of dimensions does not only expand, it also contracts and condenses. Not an explosion, but a collapse, an implosion. In other words, a movement in the opposite direction, one that returns the formed space to the non-space. It is like a return to the cosmic silence where nothing exists in the universe. In contrast to the “drawing” of space, I would like to call this “withdrawing”. From space, to non-space. From defined place, to non-place, each time unique, perhaps.
     How fast does space expand, and how fast does it implode? Does it emerge in an instant, only to vanish quickly? Or does it linger, maintaining tension as it endures? Expansion and contraction, drawing and withdrawing of space. How is the rhythm of their alternation? This would be one of the crucial problems for dance.
     With such reflections, I have always been accompanied by Ko Murobushi. What I wish to explore through his dance and his writings is the movement of the trembling body, and the generation, transformation, and dissolution of space through dance.
     However, what Murobushi draws out is not the ordinary space. His choreographic space is critical, always on the edge of crisis, a space that stands on the verge. In the first text (1975) collected in Writings of Ko Murobushi (Murobushi Ko Shusei, Tokyo: Kawadeshobo-Shinsha, 2018), he says: “When a giant stands at the street corner, it is a sign of the delusion of space”.
     He focuses on the deviation of space. And the disorder of space invites the becoming. In such a space, a giant becomes a dwarf, and a dwarf becomes a giant. A woman becomes a man, and a man becomes a woman. Moreover, he speaks of air and breath: “As the beast lies within the breath, the breath lies within the beast. Shape the scream!” Within the breath dwells the beast. And with breath, a scream rises. Is it the voice of a human, or the cry of an animal? Here, animal and human are no longer discernible.
     What should be emphasized is that he was also a voice performer. While dancing, he would shout or say something humorous. Tension and release. Floating and severing. Making people laugh, and suddenly silencing them. Both voice and sound, music and speech, possess materiality. What kind of transformation does a voice akin to John Cage invite? How profound is the rupture created by the scream? Or, how about the echo of his voice, shy and awkward, carrying a bashful smile?
     For Murobushi, becoming-beast was a consistent crucial issue. According to Marie-Christine Brandy, who designed the lighting for Murobushi’s performances in Paris during the 1980s, he asked her to transform the dancer’s body into that of an insect or a mineral. Murobushi likely wanted the floor and walls of the stage, and the light to become something else as well. Something closer to an insect, a beast, or a mineral. The light on the floor invites encounters with the uncanny and opens the way for becoming. For instance, becoming-bird (“Ko” means “giant bird”). In his diary of 1993 (he was participating in ImPulsTanz), he wrote the following.

To live as a bird, and yet not to be a bird.
To become a bird, and at the same time, not to be a bird.
To live the awakened bird.
To step out between the bird and the human,
and there, to open a bird + human realm, space and time.
At that moment, the “bird” ceases to be a mere metaphor and becomes something undecided, a mediating force, a bridge for the emergence of an entity that is neither a bird nor a human.

For Murobushi, becoming something that belongs to nothing was a matter of profound urgency. Non-belonging is not something that is simply given, it must be earned. Not aligning with any side, to be “anarchic”. He sought to play with the state of the world before it was ordered. In a choreographic space, together with a body, to produce anarchy within the body itself.

How to unleash the anarchy of the body? […]
The body—it is a hopeless
a-topian utopia.
A non-place,
An impersonal
Instant, outside of time,
Death, the death that repeats,
The body is capable of living these.

The spiral in Nijinsky, he says, is also the anarchy of energy before it is controlled by God. It is like a world before the Demiurge. Therefore, plane space must be twisted.

Here we have “planes and twists”, and the “spiral”, entwining with our axis—like geothermal heat, like the Earth’s magnetic pull—wrapping around us like two giant serpents.
And so, they mate and cross in a heterogeneity, a marriage…
In the movement of the spiral, that is, the dance, the force of chaos and becoming, with its anarchic energy, is therefore thrown into existence before being controlled by the divine.

For Murobushi, the disorder of space is also a historical, cultural, and political phenomenon. For instance, just yesterday (July 28, 2025), Katja Centonze gave an impressive talk on the historical context of Japan. The topic of “self-mummified monks” came up, a practice that was prominent in the Tohoku region. Tohoku (i.e. Northeast) was a foreign land to the central government of Kyoto. It was a place inhabited by those who did not submit to the central power.
     Moreover, the religious elements that Murobushi focuses on are not those propagated and used by the central power as dominant ideological apparatuses (state Buddhism, Confucianism, Shintoism). Murobushi has often said that he does not deny Japanese elements, but rather accepts and assumes some parts of them. However, what he draws attention to are the marginal outlandish forces in exile, on the periphery of political dominance.
     Here, we must further consider Murobushi’s 1977 text, “Hina-gata”. Translating this title is extremely difficult, for it is woven with layers of meaning.
     First, “hina” (鄙) refers to a place far removed from the capital, an outside, an outlandish wilderness in the eyes of ancient Japan’s political center. Moreover, Murobushi reinterprets “hina” as “eternal darkness” (常闇), substituting the conventional Chinese characters with truly peculiar ones. So, “hina” means the outside-eternal darkness.
     “Hina-gata” has another meaning, that of “small simulacra, shape”. That’s why “hina” (雛) refers to “dolls” (human simulacra) in Japanese. In addition, “hina” can also mean “the chick of a bird”, a child of something non-human. Furthermore, “hina-gata” can mean the prototype from which something is made. So, it is both a simulacrum and a matrix.
     Thus, within the title, he weaves these meanings together: “Simulacrum-Matrix” of “Eternal Darkness-Outside-Nonhuman”. These meanings swirl, never settling into a single, fixed interpretation. Perhaps Murobushi, in rewriting “hina-gata” as “eternal darkness”, discovered this perplexed multiplicity. He seems to have dissolved the word, only to reforge it anew.
     I would like to quote from the workshop notes in Vienna, 1996:

The Skin.
Inside, there is the outside;
and within the outside, the inside flows continuously.
Plateaus of subtle or violent differences, layers of forces intertwine, creating a strange terrain, a peculiar geography.
Continuous variation, transformation—variation continue.
We are, at every moment, already the cosmos itself, an (infinite) matrix, an archetype. A Hina-gata.
That is my “mummy”.

     Ko Murobushi has remained consistent from the very beginning.
     He tirelessly sought to remain at the edge of existence, on the outside. To be an anonymous body in a place where nothing is anything. Just a mere grain of existence.
     But can one shape the eternal darkness? Can one represent infinity? Or a scream? Darkness is darkness. Forever and always. No matter how one tries to mimic it, nothing can be shaped. Yet, at the limit of form, he dances.
     Murobushi’s movements have no preparatory action. He cuts them away. Without warning, one movement arrives. So fast, because it is unexpected, even though it might be slow. He falls. His body twists. A convulsing toe, pointing toward the empty air. A stiffened finger with no destination. He bends his back as if to sink into the earth. Immediately withdrawing from every movement, hiding his body in the darkness, poised on the trembling edge of time. And then, once more, he begins. To begin everything again.