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'' Projecting unerasable impressions is our business,'' says Ushio Amagatsu, the impish director, choreographer and lead dancer of Sankai Juku, a five man troupe that performs in the postwar Japanese dance style known as Buto.

Mr. Amagatsu does not especially enjoy explaining what his company does, but his succinct summation says much about the distinct style of Sankai Juku, a style that skillfully uses the shocking and the grotesque to create powerful images, frequently of evolution and birth. A Sankai Juku performance is infused with often spectacular moments, meticulously choreographed and carefully manipulated, that scramble the emotions.Aloka Transducer Heads shaved and bodies powdered with with rice flour, the company's five men look unformed, not quite human. They writhe, roll back their eyes and grin demoniacally,

They also perform some jaw dropping feats, notably their now famous scene from ''Jomon Sho (Tribute to Pre History),'' in which four of the dancers, almost completely nude, hang suspended upside down from the theater rafters and are lowered slowly to the stage. As with much Sankai Juku does, this is presented to equal effect both in theaters and outdoors, where the dancers have dangled from office buildings, temples and museums.

Such unerasable impressions have won the troupe an enthusiastic following in Europe, particularly in Paris, where Sankai Juku is now based. And they are currently nearing the end of their second North American tour, which has included stops in London, Ont., Washington and Boston. On Tuesday evening they will open an engagement at the City Center that is to run through next Sunday.

The members of the troupe seemed pleasantly bemused at the warm reception they received during their American visit last summer. ''We've been in Europe since 1980 and have established a base there, but we haven't done that in the United States,'' says the company manager, Sachio Ichimura. American audiences first saw Buto two years ago when Akaji Maro's powerful Dai Rakuda Kan troupe appeared at the American Dance Festival in Durham, N. C. Last year, the dancer Min Tanaka performed in New York at La Mama. And several New York dancers, notably Eiko and Koma, incorporate Buto elements into their work. But almost by definition, Buto remains controversial. Appreciation usually comes slowly.

In Japan, where Buto first evolved in the 1960's and where Sankai Juku started out in 1975, Buto is still looked upon as a faintly distasteful underground art, well outside the mainstream. Performances are held in small theaters and jazz clubs, and nearly all of Japan's 40 odd performance troupes and individual dancers support themselves with outside jobs.

It was precisely those conditions, coupled with the spirit of adventure, that lured Sankai Juku members Goro Namerikawa, Keiji Morita, Yoshiyuki Takada, Atsushi Ogata and Mr. Amagatsu to Europe in 1980. Both Dai Rakuda Kan and Kazuo Ono, the 80 year old expressionist dancer many consider the father of Buto, had already attracted an enthusiastic following in Paris, so the troupe settled there. They learned French. And Mr. Amagatsu eventually married a French woman. They recently became parents of a baby girl.

Calling their tour the eternal caravan, they traveled throughout the European countryside, performing in little towns and even on farms. They were invited to a number of arts festivals, including those in Avignon, Madrid, Edinburgh and Warsaw. During the last four years they have performed in more than a dozen countries.

The years abroad also had the desired effect when Sankai Juku returned to Japan last summer, their first performance visit in four years. Their one night Tokyo stand sold out weeks in advance, and disgruntled latecomers were left standing outside the theater in pouring rain. No one is worried about attendance for their upcoming performances here in February, either. They still may not like it, but now they will at least deal with it.

Sankai Juku's artistic vision is rooted in the ideas of Buto that were developed and honed in the 1960's by dancer Tatsumi Hijikata, a one time student of Mr. Ono and a guiding force in postwar Japanese avant garde theater.

As Mr. Ichimura explains, Buto dancers consider conventional theater, language and other modes of expression to be in decline. Buto, which literally means dance step, evolved as a new mode of expression, a way of getting back the elemental creative energies lost with the years. It also sought to reject both the domination of Western dance and the bonds of traditional Japanese dance here.

Early 20th century Japanese creative dancers had, in fact, nurtured a strong Expressionist strain, through both home grown and foreign influences, notably such German Expressionists as Mary Wigman, Rudolf Bode and Harald Kreutzberg.