Butoh is a Japanese dance-art dealing in the grotesque, taboo and extreme. It's name translates roughly as 'dance of darkness'. Ushio Amagatsu is the founder of Japan's leading butoh group, Sankai Juku. They have performed in 38 countries and won an Olivier award. In 1985, while doing a performance in Seattle, suspended upside down, one of the members of his troupe tragically fell to his death. Sankai Juku are currently in the UK, and will be performing their Toki (Time) dance Sadler's Wells for the first time this week. Ushio has modelled for Vogue, opened the LA Olympics and though he is in peak physical condition, he also smokes and drinks. We had a word:

Can you explain in your own words what butoh is and the philosophy behind it?

I am a second generation butoh dancer. Mr Hijikata and Mr Ono founded butoh in the wake of the extreme turmoil caused by World War II in our country. However, this movement was also part of the boiling spirit of the 60s everywhere else in the world. Since then butoh has had many faces. I founded Sankai Juku in 1975 because I had been close to butoh for some years and I just felt I had to do my own work.

I started to build the company by gathering 30 boys and girls for a one year workshop. At the end of a hard process, only three men remained. So Sankai Juku was a men-only company! My butoh technique is based on the concept of a dialogue with gravity. In western dance, dancers fight gravity to jump, run, move. For me, gravity is an element with which I want to dialogue, not fight. This is why my dancers use the dual concept of tension and relaxation in each of their gestures.

Why do you think your form of Butoh connects so successfully with western audiences?

Besides the technique I have developed for 33 years, the background of my dance is a balance between cultural matters and universal ones. When I took my company abroad in 1980, to France first, then Mexico, Italy and onwards, I realised that my art was speaking not to a 'national' culture, but to a universality in each man and woman. I find this very rewarding. And now I’d love to bring Sankai Juku to Africa. I am sure that the African audiences will also feel the emotions that my dancers express.

Where do you draw inspiration from?

Philosophy, poetry, literature, paintings, nature and human life are my sources of inspiration when it comes to create a new work. Each work is like a new page of my book.

You have travelled to many cities, why did you choose to live in Paris?

It’s fun. I left Paris as my main residency 16 years ago to move back to Tokyo but I keep having this question! This is probably because I keep doing my world premieres every other year in Theatre de la Ville. In fact Paris has made such good conditions for the beginning of my company that I chose to live there for more convenience. Personal matters also interfered with this choice.

What happens in the period of preparation before a performance?

Concentration and stretching for the same length as the show itself (around 1h30) and then make up for one hour.

Do you consider what you do for the many or for the few?

What a strange question ! Has any performer ever answered “for the few”? Performing all over the world makes me think my art reaches the many. No?

Has Japan changed for the better since the 1950s?

I think so! What a change from the post-war time! The 50s were difficult times for the Japanese, in many ways. Our present time has brought so many changes in our style of life, most of the time for good. But living in better conditions has also been accompanied by some kind of deterioration in human relations and I regret that. Japan is at a strategic point of exchange of information. You wouldn’t believe the hunger for world information we have in Japan. This profusion is slowly eroding our traditional life-style. It’s sad. I really believe that modernity and tradition, quietly balanced, may co-exist and, I would even say, should co-exist.

What is next?

The Paris Opera Comique opening of the Peter Eotvoes opera Lady Sarashina I staged in Lyon earlier this year, thinking about the new work to be premiered in Theatre de la Ville in May 2010 and, inbetween, touring the world with my company.

Sankai Juku will be performing Toki from 18 Nov through to 22 Nov. For tickets and further info, please visitwww.sadlerswells.com