MO Theatre: Butoh, Silence, and Presence

butoh.name Mythopoetic Theatre (founded 2009), MO Theatre (from 2015). An independent Butoh and physical theatre group in Finland and Russia.

The Beginning

I met Butoh in 2007. In early 2008 I began training and performing with Odddance Theatre of St. Petersburg, in Russia and Finland, working with Natalia Zhestovskaya and Grigory Glazunov. It began as an apprenticeship and grew into a partnership.

In 2009, together with visual artist Masha Salangina, I founded the independent professional theatre group butoh.name Mythopoetic Theatre. It was built on years of intensive practice, collaboration, and performance in Finland and Russia.

Why “Mythopoetic”?

For us, mythopoetic did not mean telling myths on a stage. It meant that the performer does not aim to give the audience a particular impression. The performer offers a presence that can call images out of the viewer: memories, feelings, and the deep, archetypal layers of existence, in the sense of Jung’s archetypes.

The performance works like a substance, a medicine, an herb. It does not hold or fix what is experienced. It invites something to appear, and lets it be different for each person. The myths are made in the viewer, not in the performer.

That is the thread through all of the group’s work, and it is still the thread through mine.

What We Made

The group created performances and short films that explored Butoh as spiritual dance, shamanistic theatre, an art of silence, and an art of presence. The duo performed in numerous shows and short films in Finland and Russia. Two works are remembered here:

• Wetland (2009), a film shot in the Soidinsuo swamp.
• The Spell of the Sensuous, a work that lives on fragile surfaces and thresholds.

MO (2015)

A new spring inspired us to look for a new name for the theatre. butoh.name Mythopoetic Theatre transformed and took a new name:

MO… a glimmer in time. MO… a breath, a way of acting. MO… the hum of the cosmos.

MO, growing and opening toward the world, toward the true self, as conscious beings. MO continues its blooming and its dance. — MO Theatre, 2015

What Remains

Around 2024, MO Theatre ceased to exist in the form it once had. Today I work as a solo artist, mostly through visual art and photography. The same invitation continues there: images that do not explain, but let something in the viewer appear.

Seven paths, seven gates, seven worlds: almost seven years were spent dancing together. We performed fiercely, experienced many landscapes, spaces, and forms, and passed through light and half-light. The group grew by loving, trusting, and letting go.

The dance continues, in 2026 and beyond.

• Butoh as practice and philosophy: Butoh Art
• Butoh in performance, and its history: Performances
• Teaching: Butoh workshops
• Image and film: Photography, Butoh-inspired short films, and the Butoh-Inspired Self-Portrait Photography Series