Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on October 2013

One of the iconic butoh dancers of his generation, Takateru Kudo leads a cast of aspiring talents in a new work. Kokai no Yume—literally “Dream of Swimming Downstream”—uses the image as a metaphor for de-evolution. Even as technology progresses, says Kudo, it can reveal to us how the fetus traces the evolution of mankind in the womb from a single cell to a seeming aquatic creature, on to an ape and then finally a human. Kudo’s cast will enact such an evolution in reverse—a fitting storyline for a dance form that always seeks to reveal human nature’s most basic drives.

Oct 10-13 at Za-Koenji. See details.