Prague report: braving the waves.

Min Tanaka, 58, is the creator of Body Weather, a dance company and way of life. He is a butoh artist from Japan whose statement, "I do not dance in the space, I dance the space," has literally marked his work for the last twenty-five years. Tanaka has become something of an icon in Prague. Dancing nude, body painted brown, he first performed in the former Soviet Union in the early 1980s, long before the 1989 Velvet Revolution, appearing in underground events, secretly announced as "meetings." Tanaka's dances have also been presented at such varied venues as the Paris Opera; the glaciers of Iceland; New York streets, parks, and rooftops; the caves of Yugoslavia; the National Theater in Prague; and the Brooklyn Academy of Music, as well as numerous forests, streams, and other natural settings.

LAST OCTOBER, Prague's Moldau River was Tanaka's chosen medium. He danced to celebrate the reopening of the city's renovated Archa ("The Ark") Theatre, after devastating flood damage in 2002 halted all theater operations. He immersed himself into the forty-five-degree water as 250 spectators gazed on in shivery awe. The Moldau current is always powerful. This bright fall day, sunlight sparkled on the waves, but the brisk wind chilled his audience to the bone. Monitored by two men with walkie-talkies, Tanaka dragged himself across the wide river along a red rope attached to both banks. A lifeboat was also on hand. Midriver, Tanaka sent a symbolic cardboard "ark" down the current, and after twenty-five long, cold minutes, he emerged onto a small islet, took hold of a long flagpole, and waved a white flag in all directions.

"I felt water running through my body throughout the performance," said Tanaka, when he described the episode in a recent interview. "It may be that the force of the water flow was stronger than I had anticipated. Later I felt I was playing with the water. When I reached the bank in the middle of the river, I was puzzled by the distance of the spectators. I thought that they had deliberately distanced themselves."

Watching this event, I was reminded of the Czech fairy-tale character Vodnik, the water spirit, who, Prague stories say, is found "in every river and every lake." According to local legend, Vodnik is a trickster and a spirit who might pull you down if you invade his water kingdom or if you show disrespect to him. Drawn as a cartoon version of Vodnik, Tanaka appeared in the local newspapers the day after the performance. Some other people were thinking along the same lines.