Kazuo Ohno.

FEBRUARY 6-7, 9-10, 1996 REVIEWED BY CAMILLE HARDY

In his ninetieth year, Kazuo Ohno is probably the oldest living soloist who continues to perform. Although age now tends to limit his range of movement, the span of years informs his choreographic poems with wisdom.

Along with Tatsumi Hijikata, Ohno was a founder of butoh, The avant-garde style that emerged in Japan following World War II partly in revolt against contemporary Western forms. To know the universe, Ohno maintains, one must examine its garbage or refuse. Hijikata expressed utter darkness in his dances, while Ohno explored the light, thus bringing together both extremes in an aesthetic union.

By way of context for the four performances of Ohno's My Mother (Watashi no Okasan), the Japan Society presented daytime video viewings that allowed audiences to watch such earlier works as Mandala of Mr. O (1971), Mr. O's Book of the Dead (1973), and Admiring La Argentina (1977). On February 8 spectators saw the American premiere of Daniel Schmid's fifteen-minute film Kazuo Ohno (1995) which was then discussed by the choreographer. Schmid has relocated Ohno's vignettes of beautiful women in lavish costumes into landscapes that range from an occluded yet sparkling shoreside fantasy to the home of Ohno and his wife, where the camera glimpses a poster of the venerable La Argentina. Ohno's attendance at a performance of the flamenco artist in l 929 inspired him to become a dancer. "Her dance was the creation of heaven and earth," he attests. Schmid's film captures Ohno's unusual physical beauty that is so photogenic as to create the kind of visual mysticism that is now only fleetingly seen in live performance.

In My Mother, Ohno attempts to trace his relationship with her from his memories of being in the womb to his experience of her presence since her death. The work is divided into five sections: "A Dream of the Fetus," "Mother's Dream," "The Will," "I Shall Not Correct It," and a finale. The first three were accompanied by Tsugaru shamisen soloist Michihiro Sato and the last two by recorded excerpts from the music of Franz Liszt.

There is actually very little movement other than Mary Wigman-like waving of the arms in My Mother. Ohno's arresting images come from his intense concentration and the shapes his body makes while wearing Etsuko Ohno's costumes. In the opening, he carries a white Rower and is attired in an ivory playsuit that exposes his slender thighs. The heavy powder on Ohno's body leaves a pattern of shimmery patches when he presses a limb or cheek to the floor, a visual recording of his innocent trajectory. Next, he appears in a long skirt and blazer, carrying a small red tea table. A beautiful headdress, a formal kimono, and a large white cloak bordered by a ruffle give his body more and then less definition. Assisted by the ubiquitous prop man from the Kabuki tradition, the dancer finally transforms himself into a barely clad figure with the burden of a lifetime assemblage of fabric piled on his head.

Drag queen? Father of voguing? Hardly. Ohno's protean character transcends gender, etching a figure that is male as well as female and--above all--depicts human interaction with the universe. The kimono itself is a unisex garment. In Ohno's art, we see the images that inspired the work of artists such as Kei Takei, and Eiko & Koma. Here is the slow, timeless unfolding of shapes and form that triggers a separate response in each individual viewer. Ohno shattered the impact of My Mother with his curtain calls--milked beyond what even Pavlova would have endorsed--and his encore. Prancing to an Elvis Presley recording of a Baptist hymn seemed an obscene afterthought.