Taking Kasai Akira’s work as a reference, this paper aims to focus the relationship between the body vision of the Japanese Butoh dance and ideas from quantum physics, to suggest the revolutionary potential that still Butoh could keeps sixty years after its birth. The founder Hijikata Tatsumi has identified a level of bodily existence that doesn’t pertain to the “human being” social identity, but rather concerns the “human body” as matter, a living material entity with its memory. To reveal this memory through dance, it is necessary to develop an internal perception of the body. Kasai develops this basic concept by exploring the very nature of matter, and this paper highlights how his dance practice is a way to achieve the expansion of awareness, which quantum physics identifies as the key to transform oneself and the world around.

Taking Kasai Akira’s work as a reference, this paper aims to focus the relationship between the body vision of the Japanese Butoh dance and ideas from quantum physics, to suggest the revolutionary potential that still Butoh could keeps sixty years after its birth. The founder Hijikata Tatsumi has identified a level of bodily existence that doesn’t pertain to the “human being” social identity, but rather concerns the “human body” as matter, a living material entity with its memory. To reveal this memory through dance, it is necessary to develop an internal perception of the body. Kasai develops this basic concept by exploring the very nature of matter, and this paper highlights how his dance practice is a way to achieve the expansion of awareness, which quantum physics identifies as the key to transform oneself and the world around.

Partendo dal lavoro di Kasai Akira, il presente contributo focalizza la relazione tra la visione corporea della danza butō giapponese e le idee della fisica quantistica, per mostrare il potenziale rivoluzionario che il butō può ancora conservare sessant'anni dopo la sua nascita. Il fondatore Hijikata Tatsumi, ha identificato un livello di esistenza corporea che non riguarda tanto l’identità sociale dell’“essere umano”, ma riguarda il “corpo umano” come materia. Di quest’entità materiale vivente la danza può rivelare la memoria, sviluppando una percezione interna del corpo. Kasai approfondisce questo concetto di base esplorando la natura stessa della materia, e qui si evidenzia come la sua pratica sia un modo per raggiungere quell’espansione della consapevolezza che la fisica quantistica identifica come chiave per trasformare se stessi e il mondo.