Partially clad dancers with shaved heads and white body make-up?
It's a contemporary form that started in Japan and is now being carried on - and fused with western movements - by the Vancouver-based Kokoro Dance.
Company co-founders Jay Hirabayashi and his wife Barbara Bourget will talk about their love of butoh as part of Place des Arts' next Salon Speaker Series next week in Coquitlam.
Butoh, said Hirabayashi, has a radical departure from the normal way of viewing movement because it incorporates interior imagery. "Unlike ballet, where you are taught technical ways of moving, it starts with a meditation on more poetic images that you place in your body and allow your body to respond," he said.
Founded in 1959 by Hijikata Tatsumi and Ohno Kazuo, butoh finds emotional expression through the dancer becoming an image such as pictures of a sculpture or lines of poetry, he explained.
Hirabayashi said the form has become so popular that at least one butoh troupe is represented each year at the Vancouver International Dance Festival, which their 28-year-old company produces.
For their talk next Thursday, Hirabayashi and Bourget - a former dancer with the Royal Winnipeg Ballet and Les Grands Ballets Canadiens - will show videos and answer questions from the audience.
Jay Hirabayashi and Barbara Bourget will speak at Coquitlam's Place des Arts (1120 Brunette Ave.) on Thursday, April 24 at 7:30 p.m. For tickets at $5, call 604-664-1636 or visit placedesarts.ca.
