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2 Whole World Friend Ohno Kazuo in Tokyo (1993) The saintly character is the character for which spiritual emotions are the habitual centre of the personal energy; and there is a certain composite photograph of universal saintliness, the same in all religions, of which features can easily be traced. —William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience Ohno Kazuo, a well-traveled, world-famous performer by 1993, was presented as a treasure of Japan for an international audience in Tokyo at the JADE festival, which drew dance scholars and performers from Asia, America, and Europe. The final ceremony and performance of August 7 featured six of Japan’s celebrated elderly dancers, and the last one was Ohno, the only nontraditional performer. The program says, “There are not many examples in the world of performances to welcome elderlies with admiration or to worship them.” In Japan they have such celebrations in dances called Okina Mai. Ohno calls his dance on this program Dance for Blessing the Elderly. He himself is just two months short of eighty-seven in this work. He dances simply in a yellow kimono, beginning early as he waits for his entrance on the side of the backlit stage. Ohno’s glowing ambiance in the background overlaps with Rojo, a temple dance performed by the priest of Motsuji Temple, Raiken Nanto. Ohno’s entrance is eternally slow, providing the scenery behind Rojo, well known for its symbolic and tense beauty as part of Ennen, a traditional ritual performance of celebration throughout Japan. It is instructive to see these two dances together, one traditional and the other metamorphic, one part of a ritual celebration, the other a piece of spiritual poetry. The temple dance features Raiken in movement slow and close to the ground with gliding steps broken into percussive rhythms. He wears billowy ritual pants with a short kimono jacket, decorated simply in plain tones. His dance has delightful 92 Essays and Poetry on Transformation surprises, with small hops into the air coming suddenly and without preparation, and the mask he wears formalizes his movements, as does his fan. His dance is smooth with softly bent knees, and his repetitive steps are punctuated with staccato at times. He bows ritually at the end of the dance. Like Ohno’s, Raiken’s dance conveys the poetry of his body and spiritual character, but it is less intentionally creative and more ritual in context. Ohno’s dance is also smooth with an occasional percussive gesture, but it is structured as improvisation and not formal by design. His improvisation is warm and gentle. Ohno becomes progressively visible on the stage as Raiken leaves; we see his aging, graceful body trailing a yellow kimono in its wake and that he carries a long staff or walking stick. Genderless, even as the kimono is worn by both sexes in Japan, he descends to the earth in his old age, caressing it, and blossoming like a golden flower in a window of sun. His performance is delicately detailed with facial and hand gestures, his large hands beckoning an unseen presence. The themes of Ohno’s dances matter less than his dancing: ever fresh, ever young and withering. The stage setting has golden trees in the back and children’s cutout paper creations hanging in long lines overhead. There are many of them, another nod to traditional Japan and a complement to Ohno’s golden dance. As ever, Ohno is highly theatrical while managing to be himself as well. His white makeup and black-rimmed eyes exaggerate his natural features, and he wears a black wig with a long feather of white. As his kimono drops away, we see his body in white briefs; his bare chest, arms, and legs are powdered white. Thunder and rain provide the music for his dance; eventually this morphs to soft electronics with mournful sounds bleeding through, obscured cries or laments from far away. Ohno does not project his dance outward; rather he lets the audience in, cultivating a soft absorbent focus, especially when he uses his staff to listen to the floor, then places it down and reclines beside it, relaxed and alert. He mirrors the staff and then rises without effort, pressing up from kneeling through the power of one leg while using the other lightly behind, this man of eighty-six. His body doesn’t falter as he comes to stand. Every moment of his dance makes a wonderful snapshot. Ohno never takes a bad picture because...

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