コモナップ-供養-

米国大に出したエッセイです。

White set-up, White make-up. I lie still on the grass ground. As if I were a princess waking up from a long sleep, I raise my arms slowly to the night air. Then, I get up, feeling nerve cells convey electric signals from head to toe, and eventually, I find many audiences watching me. 

I was a butoh dancer.

Butoh is a form of modern dance created in Japan. My father, a professional butoh dancer, took me to travel all over Japan and sometimes abroad ever since I made my stage debut when I was eight-month-old. I grew up in the noise and excitement of a dressing room. It was the inside of a flask—just like different chemicals mix and arrange themselves to form new substances, my father’s diverse co-workers cooperated and created the stage together. In the dressing room, everyone appreciated each other's differences so there was no single ideal to be. Just like chemistry, the same material wouldn't react— because each of us were unique, all of us were essential material in inducing the chemical reaction. 

However, I entered a new world when I was six: school. Everyone was similar there; they were the same age, grew up in the same area, and watched the same TV programs. I assumed that being just like others was the only way to get along well with everyone there and that others would isolate me if I didn’t behave like them. In elementary school, my future dream was to become a sweets shop owner because it was a common dream for girls. In junior high school, I joined the tennis team because most students did sports. In high school, I made an Instagram account because my friends all had one. 
Simultaneously, butoh became the symbol of difference: none of my friends did such a thing. So I stopped dancing butoh.

Even after I stopped dancing, I still highlighted my butoh experience outside of school as I started participating in extracurricular activities in junior high. Because my butoh experience was highly regarded in the selection processes, I wrote about butoh on my applications as if I had been an enthusiastic dancer, just to make myself a competitive applicant. 
 
I was being contradictory, trying to put on two different costumes at once; a monotone uniform to be the same as others at school and a colorful dress to be different from others elsewhere. Those sound adverse, but fundamentally, they are the same thing. I used butoh as an accessory, putting it on and off depending on where I was and what kind of person was desired. I gradually became more and more troubled with the two questions I had always evaded; what is butoh for me, and who am I? 
 
To take the bull by the horns and find answers to these questions, I decided to get in touch with butoh again by attending my father’s performance event as an audience. During the performance, I felt like I was moving with the dancers—crawling on the ground, shuffling awkwardly, spinning. They seemed to be praising human existence: irrational, primal, but beautiful as they were. I realized I had not appreciated butoh until then; although butoh is the art that accepts things as they are, I had used butoh as a tool to be someone else because I could not accept who I was.

Here are the answers to my questions above. Butoh, for me, is an art that embraces me as myself. It taught me that I do not need to be someone else. I am Tamaha, a butoh dancer. That’s all that matters.

Now, I’m on stage for the first time in five years. White set-up, white make-up. I take my first step forward.