People always ask me about my life as a Butoh dancer touring the world and assisting in retreats. My story begins in what was then Czechoslovakia, in Prague. I was teaching English in 1991. While there I began working with an English/Czech theater company doing bi-lingual plays. I joined a workshop of a Russian theater company called Do Teatr (years later I would join them for sever productions) who had a style I had never before experienced. During the workshop I learned that they were doing Butoh and had been trained by Japanese dancers. I fell in love with everything about it and remembered my actual first encounter with Butoh was when I was in high school and my Mom took me to see Sankai Juku which I was completely mesmerized with every detail, the slow movement the temporal subject matter. I vowed to go to Japan and study as soon as I could save enough money. About a year later I headed back to Berkeley to save some money so I could go to Japan to find a teacher.
After having been back in the Bay Area for one week, I was walking my friends dog early one morning, when I came across a punk rock guy sitting on a bench in a park. The two dogs began to play together and so I sat on the bench to chat with the guy. I told him I was in culture shock to my own culture having been in Czechoslovakia (Czech Republic, I was there when the country split into two) for 2 years. I told him I wanted to go to Japan and study Butoh, thinking he probably had never heard of it but he surprised me with his reply. He said he was a documentary film maker who had recently finished a documentary about a National Treasure of Japan who was the Butoh dancer that Hijikata (co-founder of Butoh) had sent to teach this special style of dance to the West. I screamed with glee when he said he was planning to go there for dinner the following evening and would I like to meet him there! I did, and the path of my whole life unfolded from there.
I began to go to the dance studio everyday to study. I spent many many hours doing the morning rituals of sweeping the floor, dusting the floor, gargling with salt water, stretching, before beginning to dance, working in the Sensei's garden in the afternoon. Weeks grew into years and finally I was asked to join the company on a tour to France. We went to Marsaille France and collaborated with a French dance company. Over those previous years I met my dance and love partner Shinichi Koga. Hiroko-san always paired us in shows for duets. We were always perfectly in synch. We would go on to found our own company called Uro:Teatr Koku which is part two of the story.
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