Butoh (舞踏, butō) and the art of Kazuo Ohno (大野一雄)

Butoh is shocking, provocative, physical, spiritual, erotic

Butoh is grotesque, violent, cosmic, nihilistic, cathartic, mysterious

Butoh is preparation and metamorphosis

Butoh is performing art

Butoh is contemporary avant-garde dance

Butoh is playful imagery

Butoh is taboo topics

Butoh is extreme

Butoh is absurd environments

Butoh is white-body makeup

Butoh is slow hyper-controlled motion

Butoh is with or without an audience

Butoh is no set style

Butoh is purely conceptual

Butoh is no movement at all

Butoh is controversial and universal

Butoh is all this and nothing of this at the same time

Bu is step and toh is dance

Kazuo Ohno is still alive. In fact he is 103 years old.

Kazuo Ohno sees with the soles of his feet.

Kazuo Ohno penetrates layer after layer of himself

Kazuo Ohno says : “an authentic expression only emerges when body and soul reach crisis point”

Kazuo Ohno says : “ dance projects the body’s voice”

Kazuo Ohno says : " by tightly chocking the vocal chords with the back, the body’s voice becomes audible”

Kazuo Ohno says : “ don’t look with the eyes”

Kazuo Ohno says : “ listen to the music with your heart and soul”

Kazuo Ohno says : “ I was neither a man nor a woman before birth”

Kazuo Ohno says : “ Perhaps the stage itself is a womb”

Kazuo Ohno says : “ No matter how fiercely the wind roars remain calm"

Kazuo Ohno says : “ Your every movement, regardless of how small, carries huge consequences"

Kazuo Ohno is in a wheel-chair

Kazuo Ohno still dances with his fingers

Kazuo Ohno will live forever.

Anthony and the Johnsons

It took some time for the world to come to terms with Anthony and the Johnsons. Record companies frowned at the voice of this strange androgynous singer straight out of the New York punk drag scene. But Lou Reed insisted. And now, a few years after winning the Mercury prize, Anthony Hegarty is all the rage…You can imagine the record companies that missed out the first time around, now desperately trying to find a way to down play the whole thing. " - A label, a label…We have to find a label for the music of this Anthony person... Then sooner or later everybody will quickly get bored with it. What shall we call it? How about Chamber Pop? Yeah, that's it. Chamber Pop."

Once you manage to confine something that is new and strange and beautiful, you deconstruct it, you explain it, you understand it, you consume it and you have no further use for it. And you move on to consume something else.

But the voice and interpretation of Anthony deserves better. His voice vibrates and a stream of emotions is unleashed. Somehow he brings to mind another beautiful and strange creature that graced the pop world some time ago called Klaus Nomi. Quite a few similarities there and quite a few differences as well.



Anyway, the new album of Anthony and the Johnsons, already by its cover proclaims its otherworldliness and beauty. I will come back to the work of Kazuo Ohno who is the subject of the album's cover photograph and the japanese art of Butoh in my next blog entry. Until then don't miss the album "The crying light" by Anthony and the Johnsons.