Ôno Kazuo

AbstractThis chapter narraties the artistry of Ôno Kazuo, who more than anyone else, embodied for audiences what butô could be. This chapter sketches out a starting point for Ôno in his pre-butô dances up to 1959. Passing over his time with Hijikata Tatsumi quickly, it turns to his solo career starting in 1977. Part of Ôno’s success lay in conveying an idiosyncratic world view to his audiences through movement. In brief, Ôno held that the universe is endlessly generative, but prodigal in discarding people and things along the way. In response, he expressed a combination of gratitude and guilt in his dances. The chapter closes with an analysis of his dances in terms of five intertwined themes: gender, ethnicity, age, eccentricity, and the extent to which he relied on technique or improvisation in his performances. The chapter describes and analyses the following dances: Old Man and the Sea (1959), Admiring La Argentina (1977), My Mother (1981), and The Dead Sea: Viennese Waltz and Ghosts (1985).