ABSTRACT

Butoh performers have had a long productive interaction with the cinematic form – from documented butoh performances to the spasmodic butoh-inspired performances in E. Elias Merhige’s 1990 film Begotten. This chapter will chart the terrain of various types of butoh films and survey the ways these two art forms – butoh and cinema – mutually seduced one another, how the cinematic medium has been used to record butoh performances, and what remains yet to be discovered.