CompagniaKha and Monique Arnaud
performance of Butoh dance and Noh Theatre
dance: Kea Tonetti and Monique Arnaud
live music: Tivitavi and Ogam Fabio Malizia
paper shell creation: Tivitavi
Utsusemi
sheds the cicada
among the rustling grasses
the empty reality
Kea Tonetti and Monique Arnaud
In Japanese, Utsusemi is the “empty shell” that the cicada leaves behind after moulting – a symbol of the transience and impermanence of life, it is “empty reality.” After years of living underground, the cicada mysteriously begins a process of mutation that leads it to emerge from the underground dimension to change its life in the aerial dimension. Its long preparation to come to light is consumed in a handful of days of life, finding in this destiny all the beauty, impermanence, and inevitability of existence. Its slow dance of mutation ends with its emergence from the shell that covers it, which remains empty, a memory of its past life. Utsusemi is to change in a slow, continuous metamorphosis, revealing the integument that protects and preserves empty reality. Birth – hatching – is a magic moment in which life manifests itself in the present moment and in all its beauty; every moment becoming an opportunity to enjoy eternity.
The performance was subsequently presented, in a solo Butoh dance version, at the “La voce del corpo” Festival in Osnago in 2013.
Utsusemi, with Kea Tonetti and Noh Theater Master Monique Arnaud, accompanied by live music of Tivitavi and Ogam Fabio Malizia, was presented at Centro Alik Cavaliere in Milan in 2012.
Video from the Festival La voce del corpo, Osnago, Butoh version.
Photos by Margherita Riva and Matteo Galli