As part of the BUTOHOUT FESTIVAL 2019

https://www.butohout.com/butohout-calendar?view=calendar&month=04-2019

Forbidden Laughter celebrates the powerful performance medium of Butoh, inviting audiences to experience surreal narratives within a bizarre and mysterious installation at the rustic Industrial School, Abbotsford Convent.

ButohOUT! is an annual festival celebrating creative communities and the profound performance art of Butoh. Originally called Dance of Darkness, Butoh was conceived in the Japan in the late 1950s during the social turmoil after the Second World War. It goes beyond the confines of specific culture, gender, status and religion, aspiring to universal expression
that touches the true nature of humanity. ButohOUT! 2019 will challenge the commonly held perception of Butoh as dark and grotesque, and will ask:

“Can the audience laugh at Butoh? Can we portray comedy in Butoh?”

— and the answer is a resounding YES!

The word for laughter in Japanese, warau?? comes from the verb wareru ???- to break, crack or split. Multiple images, body movements and narratives are created through the focal point of ‘laughing’. The surreal narratives are woven between the short works, through a mixture of the sacred and the carnal, the earthly and the divine, the contemporary and the mythic, Eastern and Western sensibilities in a contemporary Australian set up.