Butoh has emerged as one of the genres in evidence within the contemporary scenario of Japanese dance-theatre aesthetics. The present text intends to reflect upon the body in the Butoh dance, the narratives and knowledges that it reveals, drawing from some of Merleau-Ponty writings and based on the phenomenological stance. Considering this aesthetic scenario, we approach the issue of rationality and its unfolding in education. Generally speaking, the body has been understood as an accessory in the educational process, and such conception is still predominant. Our reflection attempts to point to other ways of understanding the body in education, starting from an attitude that seeks to overcome instrumentalism and to expand educational references by considering the phenomenology of the body and its relation to sensitive knowledge as capable of amplifying the corporeal texture of the knowledge processes. Considering the body experience in the Butoh dance, we present pointers to reflect on education related to the aesthetic experience. Among them we highlight: the plasticity of the body, its incessant production of resignifications, its openness to innovation, its mutant condition, its rupture with gestural mechanization, its avoidance of the man-world and thought-feeling fragmentations, all those aspects that bring together the recursive, integrative and creative knowledge of the body are indicators to help us think on education, because their represent new possibilities for reading the real starting from the language of the gesture, effecting dialogues between knowledges and practices in the corporeal experience.
Butoh dance; Body; Epistemology; Education