ABSTRACT
One could argue that Hijikata's returns and repetitions are the material of dance. While there is an imaginary aspect to these "returns" – they activate his imagination – there is also a material quality to them. In this chapter, the author is interested in discovering other ways to explore the stakes of Hijikata's gestures of return in his later work, not as merely symptomatic of the nostalgia for things past/Japanese prevalent in 1970s Japan, but as part of a dynamic engagement with time itself – as material in dance. The notion of gestures of temporalization is meant to underscore choreography's fundamental entanglement with time and the times. Hijikata's returns and repetitions are in the first place particular to choreographic practice and how it always figures and refigures time. Butoh especially is well known for its radical transformations of the time and timing of dance.
