Buto is like poetry in that it, in its very essence, resists the substitutive function in which words are used to express some thing In poetry it the words, in Buto it is the body - the movement encloses with itself the extreme point which it must seek, while, at the same time, by twisting, jostling, and touching it opens up a symbolic space that enfolds both the reader and the spectator. Needless to say, within that symbolic space, any explanation which takes the form, "this means so-and-so becomes meaningless.

The action on stage is intended to be as resistant to critical interpretation, as multivalent and open as possible, in order to make possible a direct channel of communication between the audience and the dancer. It is hoped that this channel would be able to bypass the symbolic mode, which is seen as tainted by the inevitable intellectualizing process that traps both the viewer and the dancer in conventionalized perceptions. Ironically enough, in pursuit of their goal of creating dance that blocks critical interpretation, most practitioners of Buto gradually left their anti-technique bias behind and from the late 1960's on began to develop a whole range of specialized techniques. [Susan Blakeley Klein. Ankoku Buto: The Premodern and Postmodern Influences on the Dance of Utter Darkness p.28]

:: comment :: . . .(tease) in my thought there is a connection between utter darkness & visible darkness . . .

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