The Simplicity of Grasping Air

Since his first experience of butoh in the 1980s, Lindsay John has trained, researched and performed to reach the spirit of this striking art form. Despite being notoriously difficult to define, and often reduced to a parody of painted white faces and physical contortion, butoh is easily recognisable and has developed into an international presence from its beginning in Japan’s social turmoil of the late 1950s. In The Simplicity of Grasping Air, John takes his investigations deeper into the longing to make the intangible visible.

“It had a working title ‘Running alone in the forest for three hours,’” Johns says. “At that stage, it was very much about trying to find something - maybe to find twenty minutes in that three hours that were worth talking about.” However, as he continued, the name changed to suit his increasingly gentle process. “The Simplicity of Grasping Air, I used it to make it less urgent! To make it much more sedate.”

Slowness of movement, the measured unfolding of an idea, is at the heart of John’s butoh. Originally a fine artist, he moved to Edinburgh after completing his degree. “I had no money, no facilities, no equipment: all I had was my body.” This encouraged him to experiment. “I joined a small experimental dance company who were trying to find new work, to make costume and so on.” Yet, he was not ready to perform himself. “To move in that fashion didn’t seem to be suitable to my feeling and thinking.”

His inspiration came in 1984. “I saw butoh at the Festival, and this had a profound effect on me,” he recollects. “I remember sitting in the audience and not knowing what I would see - I knew it was Japanese, and I was very interested in Japanese art and architecture.” However, up to that point, he had been familiar with traditional Japanese forms. He was unprepared for the shock.

“It could have come from ancient times or the future. I remember half way through the performance, I found that I had stopped breathing and was holding onto my chair. Tears were running down my eyes. Afterwards I didn’t want to leave the theatre.

Because it revolutionised the whole idea of what is and isn’t dance, but it also made me see something that was beyond the form of the human body.”

Perhaps most importantly, John saw something in butoh that he had not experienced in other art. “I thought I was looking at a human spirit, or at least seeing the reality of the body through fresh ideas.” This offered him a new direction. “This immediately gave me the courage to want to perform. I started training myself. No way to study: I went to one master class, just a day workshop.”

John would eventually be invited to Japan to study and perform, but the early years of his practice were self-taught. “I did some pieces. It resembled butoh, but it was my imagination of what butoh was.” Through years of discipline and learning, he has developed his own style of performance that leads back to the great Japanese masters.

Butoh itself is a relatively young art, although it has the appearance of something ancient, primal and shamanic. “It came out of current affairs, a questioning of values, all that kind of stuff.” John clarifies. “So butoh had the impact of really challenging contemporary society. It was one of these shouts from the underground.”

This sudden uprising had a theatrical, as well as political context. “Some of the early movers, through what they did, broke a mould. If you were a young person then, it was very difficult to be part of mainstream traditional form because you had to be part of a family - like Noh, Kabuki, they were in houses or guilds.” Butoh strove to break the conventions of a rigid society. “It was shocking in so much as it dared to express the dark, suppressed part of society. It differed from traditional forms in that it was highly expressionistic, very individualistic, improvised and stripped away all the nicety of bourgeois ways of thinking.”

And unlike many forms of dance, it eschews formalism, looking for a profound and personal expression. John regards it as “not so much a prescribed form but a prescribed approach. What unites butoh is the spontaneity, and also working from inside out. Many dance forms are concerned with geometry of the body, but butoh is about the body taking the form of the emotion.”

Although this offers freedom and originality, John admits “it is a pretty dangerous way of working, because you never know if it is going to work or not!” And audiences can be challenged. “Sometimes people are so caught up in “what’s this meant to be?” that they can’t see what is evolving in front of them.”

Nevertheless, John’s work is a beautiful and mesmerising example of the quest for unique expression, making it what he calls “a bridge between the non-physical and the physical,” and striving towards “the act of expressing something which is inexpressible in words.”

The Simplicity of Grasping Air is a contemplative process - “I consider this an installation work. You’ve got sound and video made specially for it,” explains John. “I want the sound and movement and video to blend into one.” Its slow rhythms, integration of disparate media and subtle nuances make it rewarding, as it encourages the audience to enter a different mode of perception. “Grasping means understanding - it’s trying to understand that which is otherwise inexpressible,” John concludes. “It’s non-narrative, to try and bypass the intellect.” And in doing so, he creates an emotional impact that is immediate and moving.