Performance of Butoh dance and Noh Theatre

Dance: Kea Tonetti and Monique Arnaud

Live-music: Tivitavi R. Papini and Ogam Fabio Malizia

Duration: 50′

Utsusemi Sheds the cicada among the rustling grasses the empty reality In Japanese, “Utsusemi” is the shell that the cicada leaves after molting – a symbol of the caducity and impermanence of life, and also of the “empty reality”. The cicada, after years of underground life, mysteriously starts a process of mutation that leads her to come out from the underground dimension and to change life, in the air dimension. The long preparation to come to the light is consumed in a handful of days of life, finding in this destiny all the beauty, the impermanence and the inevitability of existence. Her slow mutation dance concludes with the leaving of the shell that covers her, which remains an empty memory of her past life. Utsusemi is to change in a continuous metamorphosis, revealing the tegument that protects and preserves this empty reality. The birth – the hatching – is a magic moment where life manifests itself in the present moment and in all its beauty; and where every instant becomes the occasion to enjoy eternity.

This performance has had a further development without the presence of the Noh theater.

Presented with Monique Arnaud, Kea Tonetti, Tivitavi  e Ogam Fabio Malizia at  Centro Alik Cavaliere, Milan, 2012 and with  Kea and Tivitavi at the  Festival La voce del corpo, Osnago, IT, 2013.

Video of the butoh version at the Festival La voce del corpo, Osnago.