Darkness with flares
GooSayTen at Zero Arrow, Deborah Butler at Casa Nia

To American eyes, butoh dance is the ultimate in weirdness. Still, we don’t often see anything as beautiful, surprising, and even transcendent as this contemporary synthesis of folk art, high art, and metaphysics. The Japan Society of Boston brought us a taste of the real thing on November 8 with a single performance of GooSayTen’s To the White, to the Sky....

A locally based movement artist, [Deborah] Butler has studied butoh as well as other dance forms. She has the butoh moves — the low-to-the-ground locomotion, the grotesque angularity, the impassive face....But whereas Morita and Takeuchi’s performance was shattering in its unexpectedness, Butler’s images felt superficial.