I watched Ko Murobushi’s solo performance at Kagurazaka’s die Pratze.

The guest seating was filled with people, and it had become floor  seating. Still, it was for good reason as I was able to watch in person.
It was an incredible dance that admirably destroyed the idea that Butoh = bogus (it may have been so in the past but not now).
From the beginning, with the pillar as the starting point, he fell  facing upward, the back of his head landing on the floor! His grip on  the audience was splendid, and the stance of cutting through “arts” with  entertainment was very cool. Especially in the first half, when he does  not move his body much, as if  huge, another life form was wriggling  inside a bag of skin, some parts were made tense and stiff, and other  parts put at plain ease; no matter how you looked at it, both of these  extremities were put together in a strange way and it was astounding.  Together with his breathing, the man continually let out a strange yet  hard-to-describe voice, and at a comparatively early stage,  unexpectedly, he spoke!
Whether it was a conversation with the audience or something else, while  toying with a kind of unknown relationship, within this desperate  performance that expressed a developing, intense bitterness, I felt the  difficulty in the grasping of the body, along with the essence of art  form nowadays that has deviated from the common meaning of the word  “dance,” sink deep into my heart.
“What” in the world is Murobushi doing, “what” in the world are we  watching and “what” are we being touched by? I thought the fact that we  were never to know was made thoroughly clear. In any case, from  beginning to end, essential scenes were done in succession. Rather than a  number of essential scenes being programmed in, it felt like meeting  the various (critical) dimensions, Murobushi’s body and the audience’s  perception, one after another with time. In this way, each and every one  carried a sense of incidence, and seeing that was most certainly a form  of “witnessing.” If time allowed I would have come running again the  next day as well, but I had to let this time pass. I eagerly await next  year’s performance.

Source: Posting from Keisuke Sakurai's blog, translation by Vinci Ting, November 22, 2000

More information: ko-murobushi.com

Born in 1957 in Tokyo, Ko Murobushi is one of the best known and acclaimed Butoh artists in the world, and is recognized as a leading inheritor of Hijikata’s vision of Butoh.

He studied with Hijikata from 1968 and after a short experience as a “Yamabushi” mountain Monk, he founded a Butoh group Dairakudakan together with Akaji Maro and others. In 1974, he created a Butoh magazine “Hageshii Kisetsu (Violent Season)”, and in the same year, he founded a female Butoh company Ariadone with Carlotta Ikeda and also choreographed them.   In 1976, he founded a male Butoh group Sebi, and as a co-producer of those two groups, he introduced Butoh to Europe with big sensation.

Le dernier Eden -Porte de l'au-dela succeeded in Paris in 1978, and was followed by a big tour throughout Europe with Ariadone in 1981/82. From 1985, he concentrated on duo-productions with Urara Kusanagi and toured in Europe and South America in the following years. While he continues to open his dance and Butoh to the worldwide influences, he tries to research his work much deeper into its Japanese roots.

With his solo productions “Edge 01”, “Edge 02” and a group production “Edge 03”, he was invited by several international dance festivals; ImPulsTanz Festival, Montpellier Dance Festival, London Butoh Network Festival, and more. He has received numerous awards for residencies worldwide, including Mexico, India, and the U.S. He is also in great demand as a workshop facilitator and an artistic director of the ImPulsTanz Festival in Vienna. Through his workshops, many dancers got stimulated to find their own ways of dance. In 2003, he formed a unit called Ko&Edge Co. with three Japanese dancers and presented “Handsome Blue Sky” in “JADE2003 Hijikata Memorial” which brought considerable applause in Japan.

In 2004, this unit presented a new series titled “Experimental Body” which is to search the “edge” in a physical way. His choreography as well as his solo performance keeps his impregnable position as one of the most reputed representatives of Butoh, and he tirelessly challenges to reach new possibility. At the same time, he doesn’t hesitate to collaborate with various artists to continue to confirm his way and research more deeply. His latest solo performance is called “quick silver”. This acclaimed piece is leading him to a world tour, giving the audience much impression of a new era.

In 2008, he met Bartabas in Japan and decided to create together "The Centaur and the Animal" in 2010.

Kô Murobushi died in June 2015.

Source: Network Dance (article untitled "Butoh Legend Ko Murobushi Passes Away", 2015)

More information : ko-murobushi.com