Regina Frank, The Artist is Present
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Berlin, February 1, 1996

We went for dinner...all these unbearably beautiful women and men, mainly speaking body language, the talk of the evening was the difference between Butoh and Ballet which ended in a common sense that for a ballet dancer life is ballet and for a Butoh dancer Butoh is life. This Japanese guy drank so much and smoked that it was very recognizable that his heart was with Butoh and not with ballet (Butoh as lifestyle versus life is ballet) He's together with an Italian girl and I was pretty impressed how they communicated both not at all speaking each others language. Their English was very poor their German nonexistant. After kissing him hello she wrapped out some Japanese- Italian dictionaries and both kept looking up the words. What a good way to learn a language, someone at the table told me that they are together since eight months. They were actually very much fun. He told a story how he lost his complex because of his very small penis when he played in a Redaway film recently, all reported creatively in this sweet "Jinglish" (did you know that I Japanese chin chin means penis). When they offered him the job and told that he was supposed to play naked he didn't care, thinking that in Japan all the "fun parts" are covered with red dots. What he didn't realize is that the film was shown internationally and not only this, he had to play a book with his body and the writings/the content of the book were to be hidden under certain body parts. (chin chin) So he tried to make it look a little bit bigger but finally when he had to get "make up" the calligrapher and the designer were discussing were to put the letters and discussed their different opinions while the rest of his penis was slowly disappearing in the cold. He said at least the one advantage he got out of it was that he doesn't has a complex any more because when he saw the film in the preview he discovered his penis to be a close up with the height of three yards but a width of approx. 2 3/4 yards....