A skinny bald Japanese man rose on stage as 3000 bugs consumed every inch of his body.

In an example of Butoh dance, performer Katsura Kan enacted a situation in which bugs overcome his body until he ultimately dies. By doing slow, clenching, and curling movements, the dancer made the audience believe that he was actually being eaten alive.

Kan was the keynote speaker at the Theatre Arts Department’s Butoh Symposium entitled “Body as Edge: The Useful Paradox.”

According to Christina Braun, dancer and producer with the San Francisco Butoh Lab, the goals of the night were to bring together ideas, debates, and new knowledge in order to promote international peace through art and exchange.

Twenty-three audience members were scattered in the August Coppola Theatre in the Fine Arts building Monday night to experience the unique art form.

“I’ve always been fascinated by Asian Theatre,” said SF State Theatre Graduate Student Stacie Hendrickson. “A lot of theatre is western-based, and so it’s good to expand and see what else is out there.”

Kan, a world renowned performer and choreographer, stressed the importance of transformation as a way of thinking in Butoh, a controversial Japanese dance that involves playful and sometimes grotesque imagery and white body makeup.

Butoh was originated in post-war Japan in the 1960’s as a reaction to the country’s socially challenging time. Founders Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno developed the dance as an art form that would allow the body to speak for itself.

Dancers wear white makeup and little clothing while moving very slowly to express powerful feelings without speaking.

In performing “The Bug,” Katsura kept his fingers tightly clenched, his right foot convulsing and his toes curled. At certain moments his face would contract and his mouth would open in a state of momentarily frozen shock.

According to Yukihiro Goto, professor of Asian Theatre Studies, the Butoh dancer must take on a form of acting in which their character consumes their being.

“Hijikata tried every means to erase the eye of the performer and corner dancers so that they would surrender their identities to the art,” Goto said.

When Hijikata created Butoh he pulled inspiration from the infamous erotic writer Marquis de Sade, and included violence, mime actions, and spirituality.

Hijikata’s first Butoh performance explored the taboo of homosexuality and involved a young boy smothering a live chicken between his thighs. The piece outraged the conservative Japanese community and they established him as a radical nonconformist.

The night involved a showing of Kan’s film, “Joker in the Forest,” in which he enacts a struggle in the wild environment. The performance exuded the essence of Butoh, displaying movement that is sporadic yet contrived, crazed yet still, wild yet robotic, and beautiful yet grotesque.

Also known as the “Dance of Darkness,” Butoh requires a great amount of strength, flexibility and balance. Most of the dance is done while the performer is hunched over or on bended knee. These particular actions were inspired by Hijikata’s youth in Northern Japan where he lived among adults who were constantly hunched over working in the fields. When performers are bent over they are able to view the world from a lower level, as if they were a plant, animal or child.

“The secret to Butoh is that all is one and not separate, which is easier said than done,” said Butoh dancer and enthusiast Zachary Davis. “It’s critical that art not turn away from ambiguity and darkness.”

Butoh is largely practiced in the underground scene in Berlin, Mexico City, Japan, and the United States, and is not accepted by everyone as an art form.