ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the stages of the French fascination with butoh, the reasons for its success and its effects. Butoh's arrival in France from the late 1970s in fact coincided with a period of French fascination with and curiosity about Japan, as much for its films and literature as for Zen Buddhism. The clarity of the body's lines broke especially in how hands and feet were used, contradicting predominant usage in ballet or contemporary dance on French stages in the late 1970s. Beginning in 1978, significant prestigious productions in France generated media shockwaves and an aesthetic impact on the French choreographic scene, serving as an important step in the global export of butoh. Examining butoh's arrival on French soil encourages the development of a transnational dance history of cultural transfers, allowing in effect an analysis of how butoh was "invented" and constructed by the French gaze, as much as it allows historiographic re-examination of la nouvelle danse francaise.
