ABSTRACT
This chapter presents butoh in the mid-1980s, it was shrouded in myth and very, very difficult to find. Butoh was the embodiment of darkness or light capable of igniting powerful reactions of revelation, boredom, or disgust. The San Francisco Butoh Festival was launched as a one-week event; due to the overwhelming success of the early years, the festival quickly grew to three weeks every summer. The San Francisco Butoh Festival began as a guerrilla operation, and then established itself as the premier butoh festival in the United States with funding from the National Endowment of the Arts, the San Francisco Arts Commission, and Grants for the Arts, private foundations, businesses, and individuals. Global butoh was the theme of the 1998 festival, which brought Katsura Kan from Thailand, Yan-Shu, Masahide Omori, and Abe "M" aria from Japan, Gustavo Collini Sartor from Argentina, Diego Pinn from Mexico, and Kokoro Dance from Canada.
