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RIP Kazuo Ohno

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Following up on Brad’s post on butoh, my gifted illustrator friend Michael Wertz notes that Antony Hegarty (of the Johnsons) has written the obituary for Kazuo Ohno—one of the stark dance/performance form’s originators—who died on June 1 at the age of 103.

Ohno and fellow choreographer Tatsumi Hijikata created butoh in the ‘50s as Japan roiled in young, tortured energy, and the proliferation of butoh groups throughout America and Europe since the late ‘70s speaks to their legacy. Check out Edin Velez‘s excellent film Butoh: Dance of Darkness here.

You can see butoh’s influence on Western avant-garde pop on both the Virgin Prunes live clip and the excerpt from ½ Mensch, Ishii Sogo’s 1986 film of Einsturzende Neubauten, below.

 

 

 

Posted by Ron Nachmann
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06.08.2010
10:48 am
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Butoh: Dance Of Darkness
03.12.2010
12:42 pm
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Edin Velez‘s “Butoh: Dance of Darkness” is a mind-altering must-see film about the modern Japanese dance form. I can’t in any way profess to understand
exactly what’s happening here, but I do know that it hits me on a visceral level like no other form of dance I’ve ever encountered. It certainly works as a wonderful antidote to the ennui caused by viewing the contrived, over-cooked bullshit spectacle of that new Lady Gaga vid (gee Brad, how do you really feel about that?). See the whole film here.
 

Posted by Brad Laner
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03.12.2010
12:42 pm
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