Photos: Romain Bochet/ Alix Cazalet-Boudigues

Butoh for Beckett is Sophie Barth’s third solo in a series of performances exploring the literature of Samuel Beckett. Barth has together with her group “Variarions of Beckett” initiated an artistic research project on Beckett through the approach of using variations.

Butoh for Beckett is a performance researching how memory manifests in the mind and the body, and how to capture and manipulate it. In her solo, Barth is creating an asynchronous mirror to Krapp’s Last Tape, and exploring moving her own memories whilst sometimes moving as Krapp. However, many other voices also interfere in her incubator, and she is letting herself be led into a maze of controllable and uncontrollable images. Where do the memories emerge from, and how are they activated in the body? At the centre of this performance is Jerzy Grotowski’s approach to body-memory, which is being explored through a butoh dance lens. Barth is using butoh as a method for reading Beckett, and researches this butoh – Beckett connection through her performance. Butoh for Beckett is a performance that explores the crossovers between theatre, dance and performance art, whilst delving into Beckettian images such as the tension between immobility and movement.

24^th of January 2020: performance premiere in Lyon.

I was also invited as a keynote speaker for the conference: