Takao Kusuno: poeta do efêmero: dança-teatro e Butoh no Brasil: poéticas e processos criativos

Abstract

This research intends to reflect about poetics and creative processes that were present in Takao Kusuno's Dance-Theatre, starting from two perspectives: Butoh as a philosophy, and the perception of the ephemeral as a fundamental element to Takao Kusuno's Butoh. Takao Kusuno was born in 1945, in Hokkaido, Japan, and moved to Brazil in 1977, where he lived and created until the year of his death (2001). In Brazil, Takao conceived and directed 14 Dance-Theatre shows, many of them awarded, created the Cia Tamanduá de Dança-Teatro, and participated in the formation and transformation of several dance artists in the country, many of them recognized nationally and internationally. Takao Kusuno was very important in the History of Dance-Theater in Brazil, both for his poetics and creative processes, that are unusual for the period, and which still generate reflections and provocations, as well as for having been responsible, next with his wife and partner of art and life, Felícia Ogawa, by the insertion of Butoh in the country, which Takao had knowed in Japan, prior to his coming to Brazil. Takao did not call his creations as Butoh, but as dance-theater, but he understood Butoh as a philosophy of life; and life and art were indistinguishable and intertwined for this director. I was a student of Dorothy Lenner, actress, performer and dancer, who worked with Takao Kusuno for many years and was she who directed me to this research, understanding that this researsh could bring many contributions to new creators( as/ies) and researchers, considering that Takao Kusuno profoundly changed the life and art of the people with whom he lived and worked. This research was mainly carried out through interviews with people who worked and lived with this director. I tried to do a dialogue between these testimonies and reflections and the words of the creators of Butoh (Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno) and of some of their researchers, in order to understand Butoh as a philosophy in the art-life of Takao Kusuno, and the way in which the idea of the ephemeral seemed to permeate him.This research is interested in the way in which Takao Kusuno adapted Butoh to the Brazilian context and made it live in the womb of our culture.