YOSHITO OHNO – MASTERCLASS
Special 2-hr Workshop with butoh master YOSHITO OHNO from Japan in conjunction with
the Art Gallery of New South Wales exhibition Eikoh Hosoe: Theatre of memory
Date: THURSDAY 12 MAY at 4-6pm
Venue: The Drill, 1c New Beach Road, Rushcutters Bay
Expressions of Interest: The workshop is free but places are limited. Please provide your name, address, contact details, short biography and information about any injuries and send to Helen Martin, projects@criticalpath.org.au
This is an extraordinary opportunity to work with legendary butoh dancer Yoshito Ohno, son of the late Kazuo Ohno who was, along with Tatsumi Hijikata, the originator of butoh and hailed as the ‘soul of butoh’. Yoshito Ohno was born in Tokyo in 1938, and made his stage debut with his father, Kazuo Ohno, in The Old Man and the Sea in 1959. That same year, he appeared with Tatsumi Hijikata in Kinjiki―Forbidden Colours, that is named on the novel by Yukio Mishima. Throughout the 1960s he was one of the pioneering forces in the Ankoku butoh movement, culminating in his first solo performance in 1969 in Tokyo. He retired from performing for more than 10 years, and made his comeback in The Dead Sea, a duo with his father in 1985. Since 1986, he directed all Kazuo Ohno’s creations and in 1995, Yoshito Ohno choreographed a dance scene in Flirt, a film by Hal Hartley. In 1998, he created a solo performance, The Last Picture of Dorian Gray, based on Masakatsu Gunji’s unpublished writings. He also performed at Japan Society in 1999, sharing the stage with his father in Requiem for the 20th century. Isshin, a solo dance, was presented at the 2005 Kazuo Ohno Festival. In 2007, he was the artistic director for Hyakka Ryoran, a gala event to commemorate Kazuo Ohno’s centenary anniversary. The Wesleyan University Press has published in translation Food for the Soul, his reflections on dance and his father. Ohno has performed internationally in Europe, South America, Asia, Canada and the U.S., at such prominent venues as the La Biennale di Venezia and Japan Society New York. In 2010’s Kazuo Ohno Festival, he premiered the Promising Morning in the collaboration with the Tanztheater Wuppertal.
In Eikoh Hosoe: Theatre of memory the Art Gallery of New South Wales presents the work of an artist who has pushed the boundaries of traditional photography by integrating dance and theatre into photographic essays that lie between reality and fiction. His interactions with the novelist Yukio Mishima and with the leading figures of butoh dance Tatsumi Hijikata and Kazuo Ohno have formed the basis for his most celebrated series. In the series The butterfly dream, Hosoe presents a homage to Kazuo Ohno through photographs taken over a period of 46 years and published in celebration of Ohno’s 100th birthday. In Ukiyo-e projections Hosoe documents butoh performances he organised to commemorate the closure after forty years of Hijikata’s Asbestos Dance Studio.
Supported by: AGNSW, Japan Foundation, Critical Path, De Quincey Co
