ABSTRACT
Actions drawn from Japanese and Taiwanese death rituals, temple festivals, and funeral practices appear throughout Body-Vessel. The section "Filial Daughters" features two female dancers performing a kind of pole dancing that draws on a Taiwanese funeral practice. The pole dancing Hata Kanoko adopts from Taiwanese customs embodies the tripartite terms of survival, female corporeality, and spectacle of the death ritual. It is a spectacular act particular to the melancholy and absurdity of specific female experiences at the liminal site between life and death. Hata Kanoko scheduled the site-specific performance in Losheng long before the tsunami happened. In 2005, Hata Kanoko began to participate in the Losheng movement, which lent a more distinct and sustained cause to her "butoh action." Some of the Losheng residents stated that seeing the tightly curled hands and contorted posture that Hata Kanoko performs onstage made them think of their own infected bodies and pain.
