Obituary: Kazuo Ohno / Began experimental style of modern dance in Japan
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Kazuo Ohno, a founder of an experimental modern dance style called butoh that took hold in Japan after World War II and uses dark, grotesque imagery, painstakingly slow movement and themes of despair and desolation to reflect the atrocities of war, died June 1 of respiratory failure at a hospital in Yokohama, Japan. He was 103.
With artistic collaborator Tatsumi Hijikata, Mr. Ohno created a dance form that rejected the conventions of Western modern dance and instead drew from Japanese theater traditions such as Noh and Kabuki. In butoh, characters often project a sense of feebleness and despair while the movement tends toward the angular and distorted. Even the face is often contorted into a warped expression.
Mr. Ohno was a master butoh teacher and choreographer and one of the genre's foremost performers. He typically appeared as a soloist or, in recent years, in duets with his youngest son, Yoshito Ohno. The elder Mr. Ohno often danced wearing women's clothing, which lent his otherwise sober works an air of dark humor.
"He is, at times, a tottering, magnificent wreck, filled with memories, who calls to mind Charles Dickens' Miss Havisham and the faded film star of 'Sunset Boulevard,' with more than a little coyness," wrote New York Times dance critic Jennifer Dunning of a 1988 performance in New York.
Mr. Ohno's stage career lasted more than five decades after an unusually late start: His first performance was in 1949 when he was 43. His most acclaimed work was a 1977 homage to noted flamenco dancer Antonia Merce called "Admiring La Argentina." Mr. Ohno was inspired to begin his own dance training after seeing a Merce performance in Tokyo in 1929.
Mr. Ohno's other best-known works are "My Mother" (1981), a solo honoring his mother and their relationship, and "The Dead Sea" (1985), which, as its title suggests, is a meditation on death and spirituality. Two other significant works, "Flowers-Birds-Wind-Moon" (1990) and "Water Lilies" (1987), were inspired by Mr. Ohno's travels to Italy.
Mr. Ohno performed all over the world, bringing butoh to Europe, North and South America, the Middle East and Australia.
First Published June 18, 2010 1:52 am
