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Art Complex, responsible for the phenomenally successful show GEAR in Kyoto, plans to open a new theatre to showcase the Japanese avant-garde dance, Butoh.

This July, on Sanjo St., we open the Kyoto Butohkan, likely the first theater in Japan to be dedicated exclusively to Butoh. Butoh is an avant-garde dance style born in Japan in the 1960's.

Expressing a Japanese physicality and spirituality, the visceral style of Butoh was a fresh challenge to the dance aesthetics of the time, undermining them from the ground up. Since then, Butoh has had a lasting impact on the world of dance.

Even now, Butoh enjoys especially high recognition abroad, but within Japan, information relating to Butoh is hard to come by, and the fact is that there are few venues where one can experience Butoh.
Last year, Art Complex started production on the Butohkan Project, aiming to increase the prospects for viewing Butoh within Japan. As a part of this undertaking, we are opening the Butohkan to feature ongoing Butoh performances so that Kyoto becomes ?the place? to see Japanese Butoh dance.

As the Butohkan gains a reputation, we anticipate that news of such a permanent place to see Butoh will also have an impact on incoming tourism to Kyoto.

About the Space

A valuable cultural resource, it is a "kura," or earthenware storehouse that was built in the latter half of the Edo Period (16031868). It managed to escape the riots of the Hamaguri Rebellion of 1864, in w...