With elegant simplicity, white-painted male dancers compose a series of patterns against a black backdrop. Sankai Juku, a Tokyo- and Paris-based butoh dance troupe, presents "Kagemi (Beyond the Metaphors of Mirrors)" at the Paramount Theatre Tuesday night.

Butoh is a dance form that originated in Japan after World War II. While it's as varied as the troupes that perform it, its signature is white body makeup; slow, tense movement; and animal-like postures and gestures. Sankai Juku is one of butoh's principal international proponents.

The troupe's current presentation, "Kagemi" explores what happens behind mirrors, said founder and artistic director Ushio Amagatsu, speaking in Japanese through an interpreter by phone from Tokyo. The performance begins by using the surface of water as a mirror, he said. "It's real, but not real."

Seven scenes contrast life and death, ash and blood, sand and water. Knowing about death allows you to realize what kind of life you can live, Amagatsu said. "If you think about yourself, there's a beginning and an end, but the full of life is infinite." In other words, individual lives emerge and disappear, but human life is continuous.

"Kagemi" premiered in 2000 at Paris' Theatre de la Ville, where Amagatsu has debuted a new work nearly every two years since 1981. The director founded Sankai Juku in 1975. The company has performed in 41 countries and last toured America in 2002.

Amagatsu said he is eager to return to Seattle -- a city that figures prominently, and tragically, in the troupe's history. In 1985, Sankai Juku presented a site-specific work in which several performers were suspended from ropes above the sidewalk of a Pioneer Square building. One of the ropes failed, and troupe member Yoshiyuki Takada died in a fall. After the incident, Amagatsu wasn't sure if he wanted to continue his work, he said, but decided to do so with the encouragement of Takada's parents and his supporters in Seattle. The company has appeared here several times since then, most recently in 1999 at the Paramount Theatre.

Amagatsu will take the stage in Tuesday's show. Appearing in a few scenes, he will be demonstrating what he means when he describes his work as a conscious act of balancing the tension and relaxation of gravity.