Metamorphosis – Transformations – Fragrance

Lab seminar series Spring – Autumn 2026

From the Darkness in Dance

12 May 2026 14.00-16.00, South Campus, room 25.0.40 and online – Session chaired by Emily Kivistö.

Frauke’s Shining Light Trilogy

In post-World War II Japan, the art scene witnessed the emergence of an avant-garde dance, butoh (or butō), meaning “dance-step.” It was developed through the collaboration of Kazuo Ohno (1906-2010) and Tatsumi Hijikata (1928-1986), and was initially known as ankoku butoh, the “dance of utter darkness”. Its origins can be traced to early 20th-century German Expressionist dance, as well as traditional Japanese performance genres such as Noh and Kabuki, although diverging from established theatrical forms within the performing arts. 

A central theme in butoh is death as a poeticised aesthetic – a force that gives rise to new visual languages and the concept of the living within death. Kazuo Ohno believed that the veil between the living and the dead is thin, encouraging states of consciousness to dance within this liminal space. It is within this space that the butoh-ka (butoh dancer) begins to excavate the most unsettling human emotions.

This study aims to discern how butoh initiates movement through a process of welling up the unconscious, pivoting on butoh’s use of cathartic philosophy aligned with shamanism. Following Sondra Fraleigh’s rendition, in Butoh - Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy (2010): 

In butoh, as in alchemy, the darkness of material needs to be undergone before transformation and integration can occur.

In the Noh and butoh performance trilogy Shining Light (2021–2024) by Frauke, a Kyoto-based Swedish Noh and butoh practitioner, conveys a shamanistic sense of revival. She explores the unwavering energies that nature attracts and encapsulates in the performances Amber, Pearl, and Coral, each tied to the elemental, the hidden organic realms, through metamorphoses.

On these grounds, this present research positions Fraleigh’s phenomenological interpretation of butoh in dialogue with Frauke’s esoteric performances in Shining Light, offering insight into embodied metamorphosis and opening a nexus to the spiritual dimensions of contemporary performance art.

Keywords: Shamanism in butoh and Noh, Esoteric dance, Phenomenology, Embodied metamorphosis

Bibliography

Charlene Spretnak, The Spiritual Dynamic in Modern Art: Art History Reconsidered, 1800 to the Present, Palgrave Macmillan, 2014.

Sondra Fraleigh, “Butoh Alchemy,” Butoh Metamorphic Dance and Global Alchemy, University of Illinois Press, 2010, pp. 11-35