Abstract

Max Martins’s (1926-2009) poetic works engaged in frequent dialogues with other cultures, particularly with Asian cultures. From the start, the signature in his poems, which resembles an ideogram/logogram, already pointed to a minimalist synthesis of all work as a poetic construction between East and West - the former understood as a discursive construction of countless Asias. This paper focuses on Max Martins’s works, in the context of modern poetry, and the Sankai Juku troupe (founded in 1975) in the context of Butoh dance theatre, which arose in the second half of the 20th century, in order to find and highlight the point of convergence between poetry and dance theater in the minimalist movement of artistic body language. This comparative interpretation seeks to illustrate the significance of the artistic language of a blank space, which in poetry is filled with black ink on paper, whilst in Butoh dancing, white bodies move against a dark background of a stage that was purposely built to adapt to their materiality/corporality.

Keywords:
Max Martins; minimalist art/ body art; Butoh; Sankai Juku