Anti-traditionalist. Visionary. The man who brought graceful expression to an art form born of primal movements. Ushio Amagatsu (1949–2024) left an indelible mark on the world of butoh dance. The late founder and choreographer of the acclaimed Sankai Juku troupe spent nearly five decades crafting a remarkable body of work that explored universal themes of creation, existence, death, rebirth, and transcendence. 

Born in Yokosuka four years after World War II, Amagatsu trained in theatre, scenography and classical and modern dance before his first encounter with butoh. He co-founded butoh company Dairakudakan with two others in 1972, but left to establish Sankai Juku in 1975.

Kinkan Shonen (The Kumquat Seed; 1978), one of his earlier works for Sankai Juku, was a piece about metamorphosis and involved a live peacock as well as hundreds of tuna tails nailed to the backdrop. It also cemented their place on the international stage. In 1980, the troupe toured Europe for the first time, performing at the Nancy International Festival and the Avignon Festival in France, where they were approached to produce works for the Théâtre de la Ville in Paris. Since then, they’ve spent as much time abroad as they have in Japan, premiering works in two-year cycles at Théâtre de la Ville while touring the rest of the world.

Amagatsu’s encounter with butoh

Similar to contemporary dance, butoh defies definition because it has no fixed vocabulary.

When Amagatsu first encountered it in the ’60s, he was instantly enamoured by the way performers used their bodies so differently compared to ballet and other dance forms, and by its peculiar approach. He was, in his words, sucked into its “whirlpool of creative energy”⁶.

In 1972, he and two other artists, Akaji Maro and Isamu Osuga, co-founded Dairakudakan, one of the first few companies to join the butoh movement. Like Ohno and Hijikata, Amagatsu wanted to pursue his own interpretation of the dance, one that integrates the essence of the form with his own experiences and creative vision. He left the company three years later to establish Sankai Juku.

Sankai Juku, which means “studio by the mountain and the sea”, implies tranquillity and calm, which are characteristic of their work—and perhaps Amagatsu’s way of distinguishing his style from the others.

If early butoh employed grotesque imagery to jolt the senses, the choreographer elevated these aberrations (the distorted and deformed bodies and facial expressions) to a more metaphysical, surreal and poetic plane with his aesthetics.

An all-male troupe

Members of Sankai Juku have been likened to Buddhist monks (People; Montreal Gazette), and their works are described as “the dance equivalent of haikus” (The Guardian), psyche-penetrating” (Seattle Times) and “otherworldly” (Wall Street Journal).

How the all-male troupe came to be was purely by chance. Amagatsu started out with a year-long workshop focusing on basic training that initially had 30 members comprising men and women.

What was left of the group after that year became the core members of the company. Although gender is a non-issue within the framework of his creative vision, Sankai Juku has remained an all-male troupe ever since. 

One of his innovations with Sankai Juku was the standardisation of the butoh repertoire⁸, unlike early butoh performances which were largely improvised and relied on the spontaneous responses of the dancer’s body. The choreographer attributed this to his collaborations with Théâtre de la Ville, which has supported the company since the 1980s.

Tension and training without mirrors

In a conversation with theatre practitioner Edith Podesta, Amagatsu talked about dance in relation to the word “tension”, which to him was the basis of physical expression. He explained, “When [I] think about western dance, I think about it as a revolution against gravity. It has its own beauty, of course, but when I think of my own work, I try to accept gravity… I think about the relationship between the body and gravity. Like when we lie down, even if we were to raise our necks a little bit, we feel its pull… I am always conscious of this relationship.⁹”

At Sankai Juku, training sessions typically begin with simple exercises, such as standing on one leg, to establish the dancer’s awareness of the relationship between the body and gravity. There are no mirrors to be found and no music is played. Consciousness precedes form, and dancers are encouraged to feel and react to their emotions. This process of understanding the state of one’s body and connecting with one’s feelings manifests externally in movement, which is meditative and liberating at once.

Apart from his training regime, the meticulous choreographer, who designed and involved himself in every stage of the production process, also had his troupe backstage for a full hands-on experience: from the making of sets, to the creation of props and costumes. By doing so, dancers can have a deeper understanding of how they would be interacting with their props and sets.

What to look out for in a Sankai Juku performance

Some of butoh’s primary themes are existence, death, transcendence, metamorphosis and rebirth, and these are also present in the works of Amagatsu, which often evoke a sense of spirituality and otherworldliness.

To the choreographer, they are universal in the human experience—in the way they are explored in the myths and legends of the world, and how they resonate with people. It is also one of the many reasons why his works are so well-received all over the world.

“At the very core, we all have something in common: a sense of universality… When I travel to different countries to perform, I know that we all share this commonality, and I know that it allows my work to be communicated to different people¹⁰”.

Amagatsu imbued his works with his myths and mystical experiences, which set his “dialogue with gravity” against sprawling backdrops and specially composed scores. Audiences are transported into different worlds and states of consciousness as time stands still or stretches infinitely in these stunning dioramas of his. In Tobari: As If In an Inexhaustible Flux (2008), dancers navigate the cosmos of life against a galaxy of stars, meditating on the meaning of existence. In Kagemi: Beyond the Metaphor of Mirrors (2000), they perform under a huge canopy of lotus leaves, reflecting on life and identity.

In 2017, even as Amagatsu was diagnosed with hypopharyngeal cancer, he continued to perform until his surgery. The performance of Meguri at Esplanade in 2016 was also his last appearance in Singapore. Despite his health, he went on to choreograph three more works—including Arc (2019) and Kosa (2022)—until his passing in 2024. 

TOTEM – Void and Height (2023), which is scheduled to be performed at Singtel Waterfront Theatre at Esplanade from 4–6 Oct 2024, is Amagatsu’s final composition.

Whether it is the meditative choreographies he creates, or the mesmerising stage sets he designs from scratch, these elements are delicately woven together into visual poems. That is his legacy–that of a consummate storyteller and philosopher at work.

TOTEM — Void and Height will be staged at the Singtel Waterfront Theatre at Esplanade from 4–6 Oct 2024.