from Kazuo Ohno, to choreographic installation Ukiyo Moveable World - Yukihiko YOSHIDA’s dance writing: English

"Kazuo Ohno, Hironobu Oikawa and choreographic installation Ukiyo:Moveable World"

Yukihiko YOSHIDA

(at 17th July, "Bravo! A Joyous Send-off for Kazuo
Ohno”, at Bankart Studio NYK in Yokohama, Japan. I participated the ceremony.)

At the 1stJune, Kazuo Ohno passed away at the age of 103 years
old. He is widely known as one of Butoh founders. He started his
carrier as modern dancer and learned modern dance with Baku Ishii and Takaya Eguchi, early Japanese modern dance pioneers. Later, in 1950’s, he met young Tatsumi Hijikata. Thought their activity, they invented the new field, Butoh in dance world.
On 17th July, his farewell ceremony:” Bravo! A Joyous Send-off for Kazuo Ohno” was held in Bankart Studio NYK, at Yokohama. The studio stands in the bay and in the sea, many jerryfish gathered. Many his students, fans, and related people participated in the ceremony.

From 2008-2010, with Prof. Johannes Birringer, I has worked for and produced the new work, choreographic installation, “Ukiyo: Moveable World” as practical research with Virtual Networked Environment:

Project URL: http://people.brunel.ac.uk/dap/ukiyo.html.
Trailer URL: http://people.brunel.ac.uk/dap/Ukiyo_Sadlerswells_movie.html

This is choreographic installation both in real and virtual world. dancers with sensors and avators performed and interacted. By this research, I proposed one futuristic view of Japanese dance in next coming generation in 2010's. In the work, dancers who learned Butoh in Kazuo Ohno Dance Studio and Maison d’ Artaud by Hironobu Oikawa has worked.
In June, during our stay, we heard the sad news. Prof. Johannes
Birringer shooted the film dedicated to Kazuo Ohno, “Becaming
Leaf". After that, we released the performance on Slovenia (on 8th June , KIBLA Media Art Center, Maribor, Slovenia) and UK(26th November, Lilian Baylis Studio, Sadlers Wells)

One of the most important background of this work is ideas and method by early Butoh founder, Hironobu Oikawa and artists from his studio. Hironobu Oikawa has started his carrier at ballet dancer of Komaki Ballet in Post-war. In 1950’s he studied in France and learned pantomime, Decroux Method.　

At present, The Paris Opera Ballet studies this method.

With reading the book; “Refection” by Jean-Louis Barrault, he insisted to study the relationship between “Antonin Artaud’s method and Ascetic in Esoteric Buddism”. That was the beginning of his method. Nowadays, this method, "Artaud Method" has inspired many artists in various fields. Tatsumi Hijikata, Kazuo Ohno and even Saburo Teshigawara learned with him in past. After his back to Japan, with development of his idea and his metod, he has taught young Hijikata and Ohno. He introduced the field, "performance" into Japan. In 80’s he worked with young Saburo Teshigawara.

Teshigawara learned ballet at beginning under ballerina, Toshiko
Saiga. Under Saiga, he created the first work; “Dance of Fools”
("Ahodance"). Later, he met Oikawa and had worked with him. At that
time, Oikawa had tried to propose dance performance with media. That
was one of the origin of media performance in Japan. Teshigawara
worked in the work; “Floating Cells”(“Fuyusuru Saiboutai”) at 1985. Later, Teshigawara got independent and has flourished as the leading artist of Japanese contemporary dance. ( Hironobu Oikawa, official website: http://www.nona.dti.ne.jp/oik/ , Archive of Oikawa's work on Internet; "After Scorpio, texts and works by Hironobu Oikawa" http://sites.google.com/site/afterscorpio/oikawa-texts

"Artaud method" by Hironobu Oikawa contains the view by Eastern body knowledge; Qi and the Five Elements Theory. Additionally, Its perspective spreads widely. The method and approach has connected with Immunology and Cognitive Science by the analysis of those knowledge. Prof. Johannes Birringer is known as researcher of
dance and technology worldwide. Additionally, he also published the
book on dance and cognition; "Tanz in Kopf"(Johannes Birringer und
Josephine Fenger eds, "Tanz im Kopf / Dance and Cognition", Jahrbuch
Nr. 15, Gesellschaft für Tanzforschung, Münster: LIT Verlag, 2005,
ISBN 3-8258-8712-x http://people.brunel.ac.uk/dap/cog.html ) The
team adapted Artaud Method to dance performance with 3D virtual
environment. He will organize the forum; Artaud Forum, on 4th and 5th 2011 at Brunel University, UK.

note: this draft is the original version of my article in Channels.