Bruce Baird, Assistant Professor of Languages and Literature, University of Massachusetts AmherstButoh defies description. Observers resort to verbal contortions to articulate what they see: "the grotesque and the beautiful, the nightmarish and the poetic, the erotic and the austere, the streetwise and the spiritual." One might also say that the body in butoh is simultaneously more present and pure and more estranged than in any other manifestation. In this presentation, I seek to understand the place of the body in butoh, using the idea of the cyborg and the monster as foils for understanding this performance art.