100-year-old dancer fetes the art of darkness - Yahoo! News UK

YOKOHAMA, Japan, Jan 29 (Reuters Life!) - No chickens were strangled at the gala performance for Butoh dancer Kazuo Ohno's 100th birthday, a sign of just how much Japan's most provocative dance has changed since its debut after World War Two.

Fans of Ankoku Butoh, the "Dance of Utter Darkness", flew in from around the world for the weekend to honour Ohno, one of the founders of the dance that shocked audiences in the 1960s with stark performances reflecting the horrors of the war and the


In one of the first Butoh performances, Ohno's son Yoshito simulated sex with a chicken, smothering the bird in the process. Other Butoh dancers sometimes performed in loincloths -- or in the nude -- with wild hair and white body makeup.

But Butoh has moved on, and the new generation uses techno beats and strobe lights rather than blood and nakedness to express the confusion and insecurity of Japan's youth.

"Butoh emerged in the years after the war, so it carried all those associations with it," Yoshito Ohno said after the show, which ended with him pushing his wheelchair-bound centenarian father across the stage in a tender, slow dance.

"But now the world is totally different. Butoh was shaped by the difficult wartime experience, and we've passed it on to the next generation so that it will never happen again."

While Butoh is often associated with distorted faces and tortured movements, its admirers say the dance is less about violence and more about life, death and the human soul.

G-STRINGS AND GERSHWIN

"The young generation of Butoh dancers is more flexible, with techno music, multimedia, reference to urban culture and otaku (geek) culture," Tokyo-based producer Naoto Iina told Reuters.

"The common point for the old and new generation is the spirit, the closeness of the body and the mind," he added.

On Saturday, veteran Butoh dancers performed for an audience ranging from elderly women in traditional kimonos and wooden sandals to arty young types in miniskirts and boots.

Even in its more mellow form, Butoh can be puzzling.

An old man in a brown coat, a golden crown perched atop his mop of grey hair, paced back and forth in slow motion, exploded in violent spasms to a crescendo of roaring turbines, froze for a second, then pulled up his coat to reveal a white G-string.

A male dancer dressed in a torn black dress and huge frizzy wig, trailed by clouds of dust -- part high priest, part mad widow -- slid over the stage to the jazzy strains of George Gershwin's "Summertime".

But the true Butoh moment was Kazuo Ohno's own appearance.

Yoshito Ohno and a Korean dancer in a billowing white dress were swaying to Elvis Presley's "Can't Help Falling in Love with You" when Ohno, who suffers from Alzheimer's disease, was gently rolled in from the sidelines.

Young Butoh students placed flowers in his lap as a tearful, moved audience erupted in applause.

"Kazuo Ohno always said, when I stand before the dead and communicate with the dead, technique is of no use to me. It's a matter of the soul," said Anna Barth, a Berlin-based dancer who studied under Ohno.</img> </img> </img> </img>


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