Arcadia High School

2008 program facts..

Arcadia High School Winter Guard presents, “The Eyes of Butoh”.

In Japanese folklore, there are spirits that compel themselves to make
amends for past mistakes, maintain vows of silence, and satisfy the
yearnings of the undead. The quest for vision and sight grows
increasingly intense and distant from the confines of reality, never
quite knowing if they can trust what they have seen or heard.

The Japanese believe that they are surrounded by spirits all the time.

According to the Japanese Shinto faith, after death, a human being
becomes a spirit, sometimes a deity. It is believed that eight million
deities inhabit the heavens and the earth - the mountains, the forests,
the seas, and the very air that is breathed.

*Butoh - *An expressionist contemporary dance form which originated in
Japan in the late 1950s. Stressing the spiritual imperative in Butoh,
the form is most readily identified by its physical appearance: the
white painted faces, shaved heads, and nakedness of its performers and
the distorted shapes of its slow-moving choreography. Butoh is the
collective name for a diverse range of techniques and motivations for
dance, most often displayed with playful and grotesque imagery.


2007