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Stranger Communities: Art Labour and Berliner Butoh
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 16 September 2014
Abstract
I examine the art labour of three Japanese women butoh artists living and working internationally. They are foreign at home and abroad: when these artists return to Japan, they are erased from the current arts scene or they are cast as outsiders in a separate category from ‘Japanese artists’; they are also compelled to keep their butoh designation in foreign places because it lends an exotic, economically viable Japanese-ness to their art labour. The artists complicate any simple outsider/resident status or national/cultural representation. They also take on an in-transit-ness, in which they are always on the move and always ‘at work’. I argue that their art-labour-under-duress amplifies their physical intensity, arising from interrelated pressures such as economic conditions and relationships with butoh and Japanese art labour practices. This art labour intensity sustains creativity and initiates a ‘stranger community’ that is a vital part of their radical art labour and survival.
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- Articles
- Information
- Theatre Research International , Volume 39 , Issue 3: Theatre Research International and Theatre Survey , October 2014 , pp. 217 - 232
- Copyright
- Copyright © International Federation for Theatre Research 2014
References
NOTES
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