TADASHI ENDO, elève of the great butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno, found his own way of dance

which he calls “Butoh – MA”. MA is a very important word in zen buddhism, which has two

meanings: the “emptyness” and “the space between the things”.

When Tadashi Endo is teaching, it is not only hard warming up, improvisations and choreographic work, he also tries to give a deep view into Butoh philosophy, talks about what Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata were thinking and about their lives as “butoh-ist”. But first he lets the students search for their own Butoh. Like Kazuo Ohno says: ”everybody can dance Butoh” but may be not the Japanese butoh. Everybody can find his/her own movements in the sense of Butoh. To succeed in this research you need emptiness so that new ideas and new imaginations with new patterns of movements can grow in your mind and in your body.

Butoh-MA is the way to make the invisible visible. The minimum of movements lets the expression of feelings and situations grow to highest intensity. It is more important to keep the balance between energy, tension and control than to care for the esthetics of the movements.

“The dancer shall not dance – but should be danced”

Tadashi Endo has the position as a guest professor at the Hochschule für Darstellende Kunst Frankfurt am Main, Germany, The Academy of Music and Dance in Jerusalem, Israel, and at the Nucleo Interdisciplinar des Pesyuisas TeatrUnicamp, University Campinas, Brazil.

Tadashi Endo also performs his internationally acclaimed IKIRU,  in memory of Pina Bausch and Kazuo Ohno. More information here.