Melbourne-based Tony Yap is a leading figure in Australian interpretations of the abstract Japanese dance form of butoh and what he calls “trance dance”. In butoh and trance, movers consider the body as a porous receptacle for spirits and forces from outside of it, and which comes to move it.
Yap founded the Melaka Art & Performance Festival (MAPfest), staged in the Malaysian city of Melaka, in 2008, and this year’s festival ran from August 26 to September 1. Departing from butoh itself, many of the performances involved different levels of introspection and trance, where the focus and concentration of the performers was so intense that they barely seemed aware of their surroundings.
