Kazuo Ohno, Father of Japanese Butoh, dies at 103
7 June 2010
from today's NYTimes Obiturary
The rawness of Butoh has often been attributed to the experience of living through Hiroshima. One of Mr. Ohno’s earliest works, “Jellyfish Dance,” created in the 1950s, grew out of seeing jellyfish swimming in water where combatants, dead from hunger and disease, had been buried at sea.
Mr. Ohno started his career comparatively late, coming naturally through age to the Butoh look of an unlovely body, thin and wrinkled and far from the stereotypical dance ideal. He presented his first recital, a joint performance with Mitsuko Ando, in 1949 in Tokyo, at the age of 43. In the audience was Tatsumi Hijikata, the father of Butoh — or Ankoku Butoh (Dance of Utter Darkness), as the form was originally called.
Hijikata invited Mr. Ohno to join his dance collective, and the two worked together from 1959 to 1966 in pieces whose influences included the writings of Jean Genet, Comte de Lautréamont and Mishima.
