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Stranger Communities: Art Labour and Berliner Butoh

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2014

Abstract

I examine the art labour of three Japanese women butoh artists living and working internationally. They are foreign at home and abroad: when these artists return to Japan, they are erased from the current arts scene or they are cast as outsiders in a separate category from ‘Japanese artists’; they are also compelled to keep their butoh designation in foreign places because it lends an exotic, economically viable Japanese-ness to their art labour. The artists complicate any simple outsider/resident status or national/cultural representation. They also take on an in-transit-ness, in which they are always on the move and always ‘at work’. I argue that their art-labour-under-duress amplifies their physical intensity, arising from interrelated pressures such as economic conditions and relationships with butoh and Japanese art labour practices. This art labour intensity sustains creativity and initiates a ‘stranger community’ that is a vital part of their radical art labour and survival.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2014 

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References

NOTES

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2 All Japanese names are in the Japanese order of surname first and given name second.

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7 Ibid., pp. 37, 39.

8 Ibid., p. 39.

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12 Ibid, p. 59.

13 Ibid., p. 18.

14 Ibid., p. 3.

15 Ibid., p. 3.

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17 Ibid., p. 206.

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20 Ibid., p. 145.

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