The P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center which is affiliated with New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is currently presenting an exhibition of photographs by Masato Okada of Butoh dancer/choreographer Min Tanaka.
Butoh is an avant-garde dance form which originated in Japan with the first performance probably in 1959. Two of the originators of the form were Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno.
Yume-no-Shima garbage dump: © Masato Okada
Tanaka-san, as a child, loved the Bon-Odori. He continued with Bon-Odori until around age 12 when he started playing basketball. In this interview with Bonnie Sue Stein, he talked about his early introduction to Hijikata-san and Ohno-san:
STEIN: Did you stop doing Bon-Odori at age 12?
TANAKA: I did it sometimes, but mostly I played basketball. Because I was dance-crazy as a child I didn’t play with other boys. I was always alone. I liked basketball, working together, the formations were so interesting. Before that I couldn’t really feel society. I played in nature when I wasn’t dancing. I went to the mountains and rivers all day long. In the evening after dark I came back home. That lifestyle changed completely with basketball. I decided to go to Tokyo University of Education because it has the strongest basketball team.
STEIN: Did you graduate from there?
TANAKA: No, I stopped basketball after one year. Tatsumi Hijikata was a rugby player and Kazuo Ohno was a gymnastics teacher.
STEIN: Did Ohno perform gymnastic routines?
TANAKA: Besides teaching, no. He was a wonderful modern dancer though. The American cultural center opened in the early 1950s and the United States sent teachers every year to Japan to run seminars or workshops. Mr. Ohno always joined the group. Each year an American teacher wanted to choreograph for him because he was such a good modern dancer.
He also gave his opinions of both men with respect to Butoh:
"…Hijikata was a strong influence on all the arts – poetry, painting, theater, and dance. Mr. Ohno was influenced by Hijikata. Many people speak of Mr. Ohno as the founder of butoh. For me, Hijikata started it. Earlier, Ohno had his own expression. But he is a dancer not a choreographer, a really wonderful dancer, spiritually and also physically. But Hijikata conceptualized butoh. I respected his actions, I loved his lifestyle, his talking."
For Tanaka-san though, his underlying motivation for performing is to try to answer the question of ‘What is Dance?’. It is a question that probably cannot be fully answered, but he is willing to spend a lifetime exploring as many of its aspects as possible. For example, in the 2007 Autumn Issue of Kateigaho International Edition (KIE), he talks about the transformative nature of dance:
"Once the dance begins, a place that one had believed familiar, a place nothing out of the ordinary, is transformed into a place of celebration. That’s because dance has the power to take us away from our everyday lives. If people can share that transformation, the dancer is admitted to the place; if not, he remains an interloper. So, in that instant when I begin to dance, I am open completely, more than even I can tell. Ideally, I am in a state in which I know exactly what to do, if I can just reach for it."
Tokason © Masato Okada
In addition to the photo exhibition, P.S.1 will host dance performances by Tanaka-san in November (16 – 18). His new Locus Focus series will be presented. The series abandoned staged performance in favor of open-air dances in parks, streets, fields, and seashore from Japan to Indonesia to Spain to China. In the KIE interview, he explained why he did this:
"In contrast to dancing in the open air, an act outside social norms, one is always being critiqued in the theater. While it is great to be rated and discussed in that context, inevitably the dance is colored by having critics in mind. Plus, such evaluations assign you a certain position as a dancer, eventually determining whether or not you can make a livelihood from performing. One thing I can say for certain, though, is that the instinctive urge to dance has nothing to do with economics."
He has further distanced himself from ‘economics’ by making his living from agriculture (farming) rather than from dance.
Besides dance and farming, Tanaka-san has a modest acting career. He has appeared in live-action dramas like Kakushi ken oni no tsume (2004 – English title: The Hidden Blade) and Mezon do Himiko (2005 – International title: La Maison de Himiko). He was also a seiyuu in Tekkon Kinkreet (you can read Rachel’s review here) playing the role of Nezumi.
The photo exhibition information:
Min Tanaka – Between Mountain and Sea, Photography by Masato Okada
P.S.1 Contemporary Art Center
22-25 Jackson Ave at the intersection of 46th Ave
Long Island City, NY 11101
October 21, 2007 – January 7, 2008
Noon – 6pm (Thursdays thru Mondays)
Min Tanaka will also perform at P.S.1, November 16, 17, and 18, 2007.
More information is available at the P.S.1 website. If you are interested in seeing an example of Min Tanaka, here is a YouTube video of him in a 1993 performance with Derek Bailey in Hakushu, Japan: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A5dz_1meBjY
Information about the photographer from the Kousakusha site:
"Masato Okada – Photographer: Born in Kobe in 1949, he encountered the dancer Min Tanaka in 1975. In 1976, he started working for Kousakusha. At around the same time he also started shooting Tanaka. He followed Tanaka around during his 1824-hour Hyperdance project to more than 150 locations in both towns and wilderness all over the country, and the severe shooting conditions at places like the Yume-no-shima garbage dump and the Tojinbo cliff in Fukui Prefecture have since become legendary. As the in-house cameraman for Kousakusha, he shot all sorts of pictures, from architecture to advertising, as well as many photo reportages for the tourist yearbook Japan Now. He passed away in 2006."
Bonnie Sue Stein interview excerpts are from "Min Tanaka: Farmer/Dancer or Dancer/Farmer", The Drama Review: TDR, Vol. 30, No. 2. (Summer, 1986), pp. 142-151. KIE interview excerpts are from the 2007 Autumn Issue, Vol. 17 (pp. 118 – 119).
Min Tanaka’s website (primarily in Japanese): http://www.min-tanaka.com
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