Kazuo Ohno
Ōno Kazuo, often transcribed as Kazuo Ohno, (Japanese大野 一 雄, born October 27, 1906 in Hakodate, Hokkaidō, † June 1, 2010 in Yokohama, Kanagawa Prefecture), was a Japanese dancer and co-founder of contemporary modern dance Butoh and has many international choreographers inspired.
Life
Kazuo Ōno was on the northern island of Hokkaido, the son of a fisherman, who also led the fishermen 's cooperative of Hakodate. His father spoke Russian and his mother was a connoisseur of European cuisine, which also played the Japanese koto zither and organ.
Ōno studied at a Japanese sports high school and was initially a successful athlete. After he was taken by a school employee to a dance evening with the Spanish Tanzneuerin Antonia Mercè ( La Argentina ), he changed his career aspirations. In 1933 he began his dance training. After graduating from college, he first sports teacher at the secondary school Kanto Gakuin High School, a private Christian school in Yokohama. There he saw a performance by Harald Kreutzberg, a pupil of the German expressionist dancer Mary Wigman. He decided to study at the two Japanese modern dance pioneers Baku Ishii and Takaya Eguchi, a fellow student of Wigman, choreography.
Another profound influence besides Wigman modern dance practiced on Ono's life's work from the horrors of the Second World War. In 1938 he was drafted into the Japanese army and served there for nine years, at the end of a prisoner of war in New Guinea.
He made his first public dance performance at the age of 43 years in 1949 in Tokyo together with Mitsuko Ando. Most of the patrons also Hijikata Tatsumi, the father of the Ankoku Butoh was Butohs or ( Dance of Darkness). Hijikata invited Ōno a dance to his community. In the same year founded Ōno Kazuo his own studio in Japan.
From 1959 to 1966 Hijikata and Kazuo collaborated on dance performances, which had also influences from the works of Mishima and European writers such as Jean Genet and Comte de Lautréamont. Besides Hijikata he also appeared with other Butoh and modern dance dancers. From 1969 to 1973 he starred in the title role of three feature films directed by Chiaki Nagano. In 1977, he devoted his Inspiratorin Antonia Mercè the piece Admiring La Argentina, which is considered a classic butoh piece today.
From 1980, he began his international appearances. The titles of his principal works are called My Mother, water lilies and the street in the sky, the road on earth. Ōno figured fragile yet strong characters, often dressed as a woman and made up.
The Hamburg-based filmmaker and photographer Peter Sempel accompanied Ōno Kazuo nearly a quarter of a century and over again with the camera -2004, the poetic film portrait of Kazuo Ohno: I Dance Into the Light.
He had 2007 hundred years, his last appearance. Despite physical limitations, he formed movements with his hands and face down with arms and legs, which felt a Tanzkennerin the New York Times as perhaps the best metaphor for the dark art of Butohs.
Ōno Kazuo died on 1 June 2010 in Yokohama at the age of 103 years.
The photographer Hosoe Eiko published in 2006 in his honor the image band Kocho no Yume / The Butterfly Dream (胡蝶 の 夢). Antony and the Johnsons dedicated his 2009 CD The Crying Light.
The Kazuo Ohno Dance Studio in Tokyo is run by his son and Butoh dancers Ōno Yoshito, there also Ōno archive is kept.
Further Reading
- Kazuo Ohno / Yoshito Ohno Kazuo Ohno 's World from Without and Within. Wesleyan University Press, Middletown, Connecticut, 2004. ISBN 0-8195-6694-2