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Ko Murobushi: Fierce Unworking

Ko Murobushi

Fierce Unworking

With a foreword by Stephen Barber

Softcover, 64 pages

Date of publication: 30.01.2026

Ko Murobushi (1947–2015) was one of the most important performers and choreographers in the Japanese performance scene of the 21st century as well as a key figure in the mediation between the experimental Butoh tradition of Hijikata Tatsumi and anti-logocentric French avant-gardes as Antonin Artaud and Gilles Deleuze. Radically positioned at the intersection of the two, Murobushi reveals himself as an extraordinary and poetic author in his "thinking of the body".

Fierce Unworking highlights his role as an unparalleled pioneer of contemporary paradigms such as body language, the third space or embodied knowledge. Ten years after his death, this volume brings together writings, poems and diary fragments in collaboration with the Ko Murobushi archive in Tokyo, making many of which are available in English for the first time.

  • poetics
  • choreography
  • body
  • dancing
  • performativity

My language
English

Selected content
English

Ko Murobushi

Ko Murobushi (1947 - 2015) was one of the best known and acclaimed Butoh artists worldwide and was recognised in Japan as a leading inheritor of Hijikata's original vision of Butoh. He studied with Hijikata in 1968, briefly 'giving up' dance to become a "Yamabushi" mountain monk, after his return to society Murobushi founded several internationally acclaimed dance companies (amongst which the female Butoh-company). 

In his practice Murobushi continously opened his dance and the Butoh tradition to contemporary and foreign influences, importantly french philosophy and literature, on the other hand he tried to research his work much deeper into its Japanese roots. He toured extensively both with his work as a choreographer and performer and collaborated with many important contemporary artists and performacers. After his death his work and writings are preserved through the Ko Murpbushi Archive in Tokyo.
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