Body inking: butoh: (a poetic narrative): ... artist pages

Abstract

The writing becomes a limbed extension – a dance – inked on shore and paper by a body moving in these artist pages. The author poetically captures the process of engaging in the 22nd annual Kokoro Dance Theatre Society’s Wreck Beach Butoh Intensive: a nine-day in-studio period, followed by three outdoor performances: on the shores and in the waters of Vancouver, Canada’s Pacific Ocean. Preece captures the days in a poem, synthesizing felt experience with elements of the daily choreography and context, offering palpable, personal and sensual tellings of one woman moving through process, practice and performance. Although specific, the poems remain accessible – interpretable and relatable to the reader – as fresh offerings, as movements themselves.