I couldn't believe my luck today when I stumbled across one of my all-time favourite performance groups doing their thing in the closed shopping streets in Shinjuku today. This group do a totally whacked out form of Butoh - a really out-there dance form that is really photogenic. I have a couple of butoh galleries, I love the power and drama of this dance form. The COLLAPSINGsilence website has a great explanation and history of Butoh.

For its founders, the dance was an intense way of existing rather than an organization of space: one takes two steps to the left, one to the right. The performances were more happenings and spectacle than what most people conceive as dance performance. People, many of which were artists, writers, and musicians, went to these performances to be shocked, astounded, entertained, and shaken to the core of their soul. The dancers themselves were more interested in surviving as artists than becoming modern dancers. Expression was valued more than technique and they did not aspire to the perfect execution of a staid dance form. They expressed their souls to reveal the banality of human life in its ugliness, depravity and beauty. Heretically ritualistic subjects such as masturbation, divine transvestitism, golden phallus worship, and courtly vanity were used in butoh choreography. Nothing was sacred.

Anyway, I saw this group last year, too - in the same place in Shinjuku. More photos from today here.
More butoh galleries here, here and here.