Mu: empty is a trio of dance pieces as part of the Film Maudit 2.0 film festival of the outré. Each short film — No One and Oblivion by Ren Gyo Soh, and Hollow Bone by Aurora Dances — is an example of the horror-inspired Japanese dance and movement form of butoh.

Butoh is notoriously hard to define. It began after the second world war, and is a movement to oppose art forms that focus only on the beautiful and avoid pain, fear and awkwardness. Classically, butoh performers wear white body paint and their movements and expressions reflect an inner torment, though more modern examples can experiment quite widely with the form.

The trio is tied together by asking similar questions about the nature of death, and coming up with different non-answers.

No One

Yokko, the choreographer and sole performer of this piece, is a white-painted androgynous ghost writhing on the floor of an endless, dark hallway, rolling in rope and moving like every muscle twitch and jerking step is excruciating pain. The piece starts in black and white and crossfades back and forth into color, perhaps hinting that the mind in the story is straddling two worlds. The soundtrack is moody, grinding and discordant, and perfectly reflects Yokko’s torment.

Any fans of David Lynch watching this will immediately recognize that the man must be a fan of butoh.

The piece accelerates and reaches a peak, withdrawing some of the horror and starts blending with a third world: a sunny glen where Yokko prances like an awkward newborn creature. Perhaps the message is about rebirth on the other side of pain. Or maybe Yokko just likes to do things that will be weird and uncomfortable for the audience. Either way, it’s an exercise in finding the beauty in the horrific.

Oh, and some mouth sounds ASMR in the soundtrack that will probably really be the most horrifying part for some people.

Hollow Bone

Between the two Ren Gyo Soh pieces is Hollow Bone, a much less nightmarish piece.  Aurora Lagattuta and her seven “sisters” dance and slow-frolic on the stony sands of a La Jolla, California beach, as a poem is gently recited over a soundtrack that seems to have been made by misusing a cello.

“Where the water meets the land / they were placed in her hand / crumbled pieces clay / and sand birds watching, waiting….

feather fallen, feathers waving / cloaked before flight / awaiting their dance before night.”

The plight of the birds and the eight sisters seems to be a meditation on death and rebirth, perhaps coming to different answers than those pondered in No One.

The eight dancers seem very modern and rooted in the real world compared to other butoh performances. In fact, it might be unfair to call it butoh. Or it might be unfair to butoh to try to draw the distinction. This is outside my realm of expertise.

I used to live in southern California, and I know these women. They are liberated bodies with crystals on their dashboards and sand on the floormats, exultant on the full moon. In the distance, bemused tourists generally ignore their goings-on. It is California, after all, this is probably only the 17th weirdest thing they see before breakfast.

Oblivion

Ren Gyo Soh brings us the third piece, adding more pieces to the puzzle of death and rebirth. Three ghostly beings stand in a forest clearing, slowly turning their befuddled faces to a sky that seems to hold no warmth. Yokka returns, sharing the grassy stage with a bearded man and a woman with long curly hair. The contrast of the setting with their ghostly appearance brings to mind spirits in an unfamiliar world — pleasant to us, perhaps, but so alien to them that they can only twist in their tortured confusion. Are these apparitions the memories of lives long gone?

This soundtrack has that butoh discordance, but it rips with electric guitars and bass, creating even further dissociation between the elements of this piece.

And if you watch Yokka closely, you’ll see them defy gravity in a most unsettling way.

7.5 out of 10 Writhing Bodies