The Whole Body
There is a tendency for people to focus on individual elements of their appearance.
My nose is too big. My eyes too close together. My chin repeats itself. My legs are too thick. My legs are too thin. We have been raised to believe that ugly is amoral.
We never manage to focus holistically, only managing to piece together an image that is the accumulation of individual pieces. Others have a greater perspective on us than we have on ourselves – they can see the back of our head, or our nose. We see them, their noses and backs of heads, and figure that we must have something similar, but like most others we still judge on singular aspects based on our personal hierarchy of important features, usually that which will make us seem the least judgemental or superficial. “They have a great personality”, “Great shoes”, “Nice car”, “He’s a loving uncle” – all as a comparison to their other qualities. Only the most open to observation may see the greatest perspective; that part of us which is greater than the sum of our parts.
As in our character, our abilities, our attitudes and our behaviours, we are more than simply one thing. You are not your chicken legs, or your double chin. You are not your choice of spectacles, or your ability to shoot pool. As Brad Pitt tells the Fight Club, you are not your f***ing khakis. We may not be able to carry a tune in a bucket. We may not be able to climb a flight of stairs without puffing. We may habitually pronounce any word ending in ‘ing’ as if it were ‘ink’, but this is not seeing the whole person as much as their limitations. In this sense, even beauty is a limitation.
Unconsciously we focus on one thing and define the whole accordingly. Butoh is confronting because it shows the whole. It does this through stripping away the individual and idiosyncratic, showing the component parts for what they are – individual, yet integrated. It is only by removing the accoutrements that we reduce the associations. Nothing is differentiated, not even physical attributes, because we see the whole body relative to itself. Freed of these added layers of constructed meaning, the inner life – the energetic quality that some call attitude and some call spirit – is unobstructed and shines through the layers of the glass onion.
“Standing on the bare ground—my head bathed by the blithe air, and uplifted into infinite space—all mean egotism vanishes. I become a transparent Eyeball; I am nothing; I see all; the currents of the Universal Being circulate through me; I am part or particle of God.”
These aspects of the body, personality and spirit coming together in the one body are the same as the actors in the cast or scenes in the performance. They cannot exist independently of each other and force the perspective to oscillate between individual and holistic at such a speed that it creates a third, dynamic image.
It is in this dynamic and shifting perspective where meaning is fluid and possibility is endless that we can reject rejection. This is the true transformational quality of the whole body.
