ARBN 679434649

Tamah L. Nakamura

Tamah L. Nakamura – Bio


Edition:

Tamah is a member of Butoh Seiryukai dance group in Fukuoka, Japan and is also an M.Ed. in second language education and an M.A. in Human Development and a university teacher in the areas of intercultural communication and comparative gender studies. An American permanent resident of Japan, she has also taught in Korea, Singapore, and the United States. Her workshops in the community include gender issues discussion groups for Japanese and non-Japanese women as well as “Movement for Refreshment of the Heart.” She is a doctoral candidate in Human and Organizational Systems at Fielding Graduate Institute with an emphasis on social identity and community creation through somatic movement.

How Does Butoh Become Meaningful to Seiryukai Dancers: Self Perception, Social Relations, and Community


Edition: 2003 Vol. 2 No. 2

Keywords
Butoh, Ecopsychology, Hijikata Tatsumi, dance group

The founder of the ‘butoh’ genre, Hijikata Tatsumi emerged in post-war Japan, an irreverent and challenging choreographer and intellect. In this article, a field researcher’s active relationship with a Butoh dance group illustrates dance therapy from a specifically ‘butoh’ perspective. The field notes express links to ecopsychology by the integral relationship between family, community and the earth. The notes detail the expression of the dancer’s unconscious and subconscious. In conclusion, the researcher evaluated the ‘butoh’ genre as pivotal to self analysis for this sample. (pp 10-14)

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Dance Movement Therapy in Japan


Edition: 2003 Vol. 2 No. 1

Keywords
Butoh, role analysis, women’s repression, social structure, Japanese dance genre

This article addresses the cross-cultural comparisons of studying in the West and teaching in Japan. The key development in the discussion was that social roles become individualised, internalised and expressed in movement. By offering multiple methods from the Japanese ‘Butoh’ dance genre to engage in role analysis, the text is able to display how the changes in the structure of society are internalised within the body. Despite the emphasis on chronology, the article draws conclusions on women’s position in society and allows extension of theoretical discussions within the field of dance exploration into sexual repression. (pp 22-24)

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