Rebellious Bodies Festival 2025: Farewells and Metamorphosis in 'Goo Remembers'/'Tonight or Never'
- Elspeth Chan
- May 7
- 5 min read
Updated: May 8
Does a caterpillar foresee that it will emerge from its cocoon to soar freely? When we plan our lives, how ready are we to face death?
The butoh double-bill performances in the Rebellious Bodies Festival 2025, Goo Remembers and Tonight or Never…, respectively presented by artists Mai Burns and artist duo MutsumiNeiro weave these existential questions into the visceral fabric of butoh, leaving them beautifully unanswered. These performances and MutsumiNeiro’s workshop invite the audience/participants into a meditative space where movement and symbolism intertwine in the process of unearthing the authentic self.
Goo Remembers begins with Mai’s solitary figure dressed in a purplish-red kimono, clutching a skull-like puppet head that resembles a fossilized ancient creature in near darkness. Ethereal music fills the space, stirring introspection among the audience. As the music fades, Mai carefully traverses the stage diagonally, her toes in particular illuminated by a warm, torch-like glow guiding her path. The walk is serene yet electrifying, suffused with a heightened corporeal intensity that captivates the audience even without musical accompaniment. The audience’s gaze is magnetically drawn to the puppet held in her hands and also her firmly downward-pointing index finger that grounds her presence. This seemingly simple act of crossing the stage becomes a locus of sensation and attention — a demonstration of MutsumiNeiro workshop’s essence — transformation in butoh is not a series of rehearsed gestures but emergent, bodily sensations arising in the moment. The unwavering attunement demands two-way concentration and shared vulnerability between both the performer and the audience.
At the stage’s midpoint, violin strings signal transformation — she sinks into a kneel, offering a ritualistic farewell to the puppet, which could be her past. Over five minutes, her body morphs beneath the kimono, from kneeling to plow pose, a shapeshifting form evoking ‘body archaeology’—a term from butoh dancer/psychologist Kasai Toshiharu who describes butoh as excavation of buried and conditioned body-mind. Peeling off the kimono, Mai reveals cocoon-like white shorts. While the kimono is imbued with profound cultural significance, in this context it appears more as a metaphorical ‘social skin’ than a marker of traditional Japanese identity. The shedding of the kimono is by no means a denial of heritage; on the contrary, it enacts a process of peeling away socially inscribed layers, allowing an exploration of the non-duality between inherited cultural lineages and the construction of selfhood.
Her legs, now protagonists, mimic worms gradually breaking free from a cocoon or sprouts seeking light, underscored by tinkling music. The stillness culminates into a moment when Mai rises and the spotlights boom, reaching a corporeal existence close to human being with her fluffy outfit, sunglasses and the disco beats. Yet her deliberately slow movements clash with the music’s rhythm, creating an appealing dissonant synergy. The tension peaks with Mai bursting through a fire door by the side, merging the stage with the bright sky and bird-chirping from outside. The reflection on the title Goo popped in — the sticky paste could metaphorically mean the mud surrounding the worms, or the cocoon that houses the metamorphosis. Instead of an unnamed substance, Goo is a sentient being.
The transition to Tonight or Never... transports the audience from introspection to the confrontation with mortality. It opens in pitch darkness, with MutsumiNeiro marching slowly to Mendelssohn’s Wedding March, their zombie-like movements and weighted steps seem to carry ancestral lineage and mortality. Each step is laden with presence, reflecting the workshop teaching that every single step is an entry into an unknown new realm, a fully-lived moment without preparation but with courage to move forward as if it is the last step in life.
Mutsumi dressed in a white wedding gown, is equally painted in white, while Neiro, in green-purple eye shadows, is crowned with a peacock feather that symbolizes immortality, intensifying the theatrical dialogue of life and death, reverberating butoh’s philosophical underpinnings at the thresholds between multiple worlds. After the bridal veil is lifted by Neiro, they listen to each other’s heart beats just like a farewell act. Then, Mutsumi drifts to backstage, the bell sounds fracture the romance into a poignant narrative of love and loss, leaving Neiro to embody grief and remember their shared moments through a slow agonizing solo in the passionate Latin Tango tune.
Neiro’s solo dance pauses when he unveils Mutsumi, in a pink tulle skirt, seated against a purple-lit brick wall with a rose in her mouth. The rose appears to pay homage to Kazuo Ohno while the tulle skirt is reminiscent of Marc Chagall’s ethereal flowers — dreamlike yet engulfing, it carries Mutsumi from impressionist grace to expressionist resilience. Her fists cross at the wrists, signalling death in ballet language, yet her last gesture in this scene — the reposing spinal landscape next to the shedded skirt suggests a tranquil journey to rebirth.
Overwhelmed by grief, Neiro appears with his head hidden in an extraordinarily large bundle wrapped in a white cloth. As he bow-legged dances around the stage, he painstakingly forms a ritualistic circle around Mutsumi’s body using the garments taken out from the bundle. The final scene shows his heart-wrenching struggle to clothe Mutsumi in her wedding gown, but the weight of her lifeless form is as unbearable as Neiro’s yearning for reunion.
Neiro’s repeated attempts to lift Mutsumi are marked by increasing physical and emotional intensity, however, the suspension and viscerality seem to have lost after numerous unsuccessful tries. This also slightly disrupts the momentum leading to the closing, when Mutsumi rises again in the fluidly dream-like dance, reprising their wedding march and conjuring the possibility of an imaginary reunion. Yet, in a fleeting shift of light, she vanishes again, leaving Neiro alone, while the audience is left bewilderedly suspended to reconfigure their own understanding of the co-existence of life and death.
Nevertheless, the double bill invites participants to experience butoh not just as spectators but as active explorers of transformation in their own bodies and lives. It illuminates butoh’s unique capacity to dwell in liminality — between life and death, past and present, self and other, offering a space where the process of becoming is celebrated as the most profound beauty. Casting off the fabric in both performances metaphorically represents the shedding of conditioned layers to reveal and renew the inner self — it could be the negotiation between past identities and rebirth, or a passage through grief to compassion.
This evening was not just a performance; it was an immersive encounter with the dance of transformation, an invitation to keep entering, to keep becoming.
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This double-bill performance is part of the Rebellious Bodies Festival 2025: https://www.rebelliousbodiesfestival.com/.
