CHINESE YOUTH LEAGUE MEMBERS, WHO OFTEN PERFORM AT THE AGNSW, AT THE 2011 MCDONALD’S SYDNEY EISTEDDFOD. PHOTO: COURTESY WINKIPOP MEDIA – TAASA Review December 2011

Butoh, the Japanese dance style that comes in various forms even in its home country, struck a chord with Australian audiences in the times when we had more Asian visiting companies through our arts festivals.

It’s a bond that has grown through Australian resident butoh performers such as Yumi Umiumare, based in Melbourne, who once recalled in a public speaking engagement that when she returned to Japan after living in Australia for some years, her friends thought she had grown larger.

On the contrary, she worked out, it was just that her gestures and sense of space had expanded in sympathy with her new home. Tess de Quincey works out of Sydney, touring nationally and internationally with the `body weather’ style of butoh that was developed in Japan, but which she has taken further as a form of individual expression in her Australian surroundings...