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It is an image that is etched in the memory: the child Ushio Amagatsu in uniform looking out to sea. It is engraved there along with bare white backs that slowly, transformed by the swinging of hips, seem to slough off their old skin to be reborn. Yet these images don’t just date from yesterday. It was in 1978 that the Japanese choreographer designed Kinkan Shonen Graine de Cumquat (The Kumquat Seed), a young boy’s dream about the origins of life and death, for his troupe Sankai Juku (meaning ‘studio by the mountain and by the sea’). Staged three years later at Lyon’s Croix-Rousse, this sensational production deeply moved audiences and doubtless also went some way to altering their views, even their conceptions of dance. In this signature piece, Amagatsu’s ‘in between beings’, depict a spellbinding, majestic ritual, merging with an animal, fish or peacock. Standing out against the background, a genuine backdrop made from dried fish, the dancers move with a slowness that is characteristic of butoh, stretching time until it breaks. Thirty years later, to see them again is a wonderful gift.