ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author discusses the impact of butoh performances, imagery, and writings on her practice as a visual artist and performer as an example of the impact of butoh on artists outside of Japan. Her practice as a photographer and videographer developed both in France and Japan, creating and editing series of pictures alternating with video projects, interrogating the theme of self-portrait using dance, performance, makeup, kimono, ukiyo-e, black and white, superposition of lines and surfaces, framing, blurs, fades, and montage. In other words, butoh was appealing to the dancer in her as it appeared as a phenomenal kind of dance, playing with a stage presence that deals with its own difficulties of being post-modern, resisting, underground, stubborn. Butoh helped shape the role self-representation was having in my photo and video projects. In terms of imagery, viewing butoh initiated my understanding of the power and modalities of self-presence one can shape, individually and collectively.
