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Kazuo Ohno

Page history last edited by Shawna 13 years, 5 months ago

 

Kazuo Ohno’s Exploration of Life and Death

 

 

       Kazou Ohno believed that you needed a “dead body” to convey life.  He felt that in order to capture the essence of existence, an individuals body could not be influenced by social experience.  A body could not have physical or psychological restraints.  He frequently compared a “dead body” to a “living body” when describing the art of butoh.  Ohno spent his career exploring life and death through butoh.  As a solo performer, Ohno wanted to create an entire world for his audience.  He wanted to personify life, and death, and rebirth.  When Ohno first began to study butoh, he was rehearsing for a performance entitled The Old Man and the Sea.  At the end of each performance, Ohno would faint.  Physically and psychologically depleted.    He believed that there were things that could only be communicated through the body, and he spent his life immersed in themes  life and death through movement. 

 

Kazuo Ono’s Influence on Butoh

 

      The man who is credited with creating the concept of Butoh is Tatsumi Hijikata.  Hijikata referred to Butoh as Ankoku Butoh, or Dance of Darkness.  He felt that Japanese culture was too heavily influenced by the west, and in postwar Japan, he felt motivated to create something uniquely Japanese.  Hijikata grew up in rurul northern Japan in the presence of poverty, hunger and countless other misfortunes.  He was one of many children, and one of his sisters was sold into prostitution at a young age.  He became familiar with cruel circumstances at an early age and this influenced his artistic preferences.  His work was influenced not only by his harsh childhood, but also by a restlessness felt by a culture incapable of reclaiming their roots in the face of materialism and the frustration that this caused. HIjikata, and those who learned from him and imitated him, rendered scenes meant to make viewers uncomfortable.  To Hijikata and his followers Buhto was about rebellion.  His work was laced with themes of poverty, violence, tortured bodies, and horror.

 

 

     Kazuo Ohno was born in 1906 in Hakodate City, Hokkaido.  He grew up in a rural, impoverished area, and witnessed many of the same cruel circumstances that Hijikata recalls from his own youth.  He graduated from high school and went to The Japan Athletic College in Tokyo.  After college he was employed as a physical education teacher at a private Christian institution in Yokohama.  During his time at the institution, he was baptized, and became a Christian himself.  In 1936, at the age of thirty, he began taking dance classes.  However in 1938, he was drafted into the Japanese Army and he did not resume dancing until 1946, at the age of 40.  It was during this time that he began to use dance as a means of self expression.  He began to experiment with movements and emotion and in 1949, at the age of 43, Kazuo held his first recital consisting of several very short pieces.  In 1954, Kazuo met Tatsumi Hijikata.  The collaboration that took place between Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata marks the beginning of Ohno’s career as a buhto dancer.

 

 

      Ohno used butoh as a medium to explore life.  Diverging from typical Ankoku Butoh, Ohno took a celebratory look at life in many of his performances.  He expressed admiration for his mother, his source of life, in his performance My Mother.  Similarly he marveled at the beauty of the Dead Sea in Dance of the Dead Sea.  Ohno explored death in his dances as well, but always in the context of a full life.  Themes of death in Ohno’s dances were cyclical and poetic unlike the unyielding, indefinite presence of death pervasive in much of Ankoku Butoh.  Ohno’s performances were significant because he drew heavily from his own life experiences rather than tapping in to the collective consciousness that many Ankoku Butoh dancers drew from.  He used his body as a medium to tell his own stories.

 

 

 

Ohno’s Inspiration

 

     Ohno once said “A very small thing can make a very great work, a very small experience from life which we carry in our heart and allow to take form”.  Most of Ohno’s performances were based on specific events in his life, and how he understood these events in terms of life and death.

 

Admiring La Argentina

 

      In this performance Ohno renders his version of the life of a Spanish dancer known as La Argentina.  Ohno saw her perform when he was young, and later referred to this experience as what inspired him to dance.  Ohno’s admiration of La Argentina influenced him throughout his life.  His fascination with her accomplishments and her life is an excellent example of how Ohno used the "Dance of Darkness" to explore life.  La Argentina was a Spanish dancer who was very influential in garnering appreciation for traditional Spanish dance.  She is well known as the person who transformed traditional dance into theatrical art.  At the age of 11, she was the premier dancer at the Madrid Opera, but she left to study native Spanish dances at the age of fourteen.  During this time she cultivated a style that was not well received.  Impoverished, La Argentia would spent her time dancing in cafes.  Years later, she reclaimed her lost fame, and became known as the “Master of the Solo”, performing in theatres once again, but on her own artistic terms.

      In his performance Ohno depicts themes of love and suffering, youth and old age, and life and death.  In his work, he represents La Argentina.  Ohno’s performance begins with La Argentina’s death and then progresses to convey her rebirth and subsequent life.  Ohno’s concept of "dead body" can explain his experimentation with gender and androgyny in most of his performances.  At one point he is dressed in lace and flowers as La Argentina and in another scene, he is himself, admiring his artistic icon.

 

 

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My Mother

 

     When Ohno’s mother fell ill, she began to speak of her dreams and her imagination.  At times she was incoherent and delirious.  One of the last things that Ohno remembers his mother saying to him on her deathbed is, “A flounder is swimming with me”.  Ohno used this image as inspiration for his performance.  The subjective storyline that served as the foundation for My Motherallowed Ohno to create a dance that evaluates life and death from a very human perspective. In his performance, Ohno celebrates life by tracing his origins back to his mother’s womb.  He recounts his life, as well as the life of his mother, drawing on memories of his childhood and his mother’s death.  He draws inspiration from his mother’s last words in the last act of the performance.  At the end of the performance Ono carries his mother into the arms of death and then gives birth to her again.  He renders life cyclical, respecting both death and birth, and exploring the limits of each through his movements and ideas on stage.

 

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The Dead Sea

 

     This performance was influenced by Ohno’s visit to the Dead Sea in 1983.  He recorded his thoughts in a journal and wrote, “The mountains which surrounded the Dead Sea were formed out of salt.  I thought that nothing could live there and was surprised to see small rodents scurrying between the rocks”.  Ohno’s fascination with the life present at the Dead Sea inspired his performance through which he again explored the blurred boundaries between the living and the non living.  The existence of life where death seems inevitable.  Ohno's son performed alongside him in this performance.

 

 

 

The Dichotomy of Ohno’s Appearance

 

     Ohno’s appearance while performing was equal parts life and death.  Ono’s face was always painted white for performances.  The shadows and wrinkles on his face were amplified.  His white mask invited darkness to play across his skin.  His eyes were traced heavily with black paint.  His hair was usually unkept and wild.  His pale, dark eyed expressions, framed by a rough halo of dark hair conjure up images of death and mortality.  His movements on the other hand, were graceful and bold.  Even in photographs, Ohno took on a kinetic quality.   Unfurling his fingers like a magician and raising his arms to frame his face.  He used his body to create geometric and organic shapes.  To create entire scenes and experiences.  He is usually gazing upwards in photographs, with his face uplifted, contrary to most butoh dancer's attention to the ground, with a downcast face and eyes.  Ohno and his son Yoshito published a book in 2004 entitled Kazuo Ohno: From Without and Within.  The book contains 129 photographs, chronicling Ohno’s exploration of life and death through the dichotomy of his physical appearance. 

 

 

 

Ohno's Death

 

 

     Ohno never really retired from dancing.  He spent much of his time in his dance studio, built in 1961 in Hodogaya, Yokohama.  Even when his own performances began to wan, Ohno continued to choreograph dances from his studio and to teach classes.  Ohno’s son Yoshito continues to maintain the studio, and holds Butoh workshops three times a week. Ohno’s exploration of life and death were particularly vivid in his last performances.  Ohno's first performance was at 43 and some of his most famous performances did not take place until much later in Ohno's life.  For example, Ohno debuted Admiring La Argentina at the age of 71.  He first performed The Dead Seaat the age of 79.  Kazuo Ono continued performing despite the slow erosion of his health.  Toward the end of his life Kazuo would dance through graceful and exaggerated hand movements while seated in a wheelchair.  He would also perform from the floor of stages, and laboriously drag his body through choreographed movements.  He insisted on life, even when death was imminent, and slowly robbing him of his mobility.  Ohno confronted death in his own life just as he confronted it in his performances. He did not revere it for its power and permanence.  Instead he embraced it as he embraced life.  Death was simply another aspect of existence.  He performed some of his most emotional and memorable works at the end of his life, because he had spent a career exploring death, and did not see it as an obstacle but an opportunity.  Ohno once said, "My art is a an art of improvisation.  It is dangerous. To succeed, one must reach the very depth of the human soul, and then, express it...".  He died at the age of 103 of respiratory failure.

 

 

Links

 

http://www.ashevillebutoh.com/category/history/

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/06/02/arts/dance/02ohno.html

 

Work Cited

 

Gallagher, Patricia. "KAZUO OHNO'S WORLD: FROM WITHOUT AND WITHIN." Asian Theatre Journal 23.2 (2006): 417-419. Academic Search Premier. EBSCO. Web. 2 Nov. 2010.

 

Munroe, Alexandra. Japanese Art After 1945: Scream Against the Sky. New York: Harry N. Abrams Inc., 1994. Print.

 

Viala, Jane. Butoh: Shades of Darkness. Tokyo: Shufunotomo Ltd., 1988. Print.

 

http://www.kazuoohnodancestudio.com/english/kazuo/

 

 

 

 

 

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