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| Mitsutaka Ishii (right) and Masahide Ohmori (left). Butoh Performance. Terpsichore, Tokyo. (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011) |
Mitsutaka Ishii (石井満隆), disciple and colleague of Tatsumi Hijikata (土方 巽), is already a legend in Japanese Butoh; Masahide Ohmori (大森政秀), somewhat younger than Ishii, and also related to Hijikata's Butoh, may have less fame but has a truly surprising force on the stage.
At the performance I had the opportunity to see, at the legendary little Terpsichore theatre in Nakano, in May 2011, Masahide Ohmori's stage-presence was what stayed in my mind: in his first choreography of the night, a solo, Ohmori, who has an impressive physique due to a kind of abscess or tumor on the right side of his head, wearing a woman black Victorian style dress, with his face and arms in white makeup and his hair completely scrambled (as is normal in Butoh), showed us a slow walking movement filled with inner tension and with a Wagner's piece as background music. There was simply no way our bodies were pushed backwards by the force he literally threw on to us; those were only 10 or 15 minutes of that unforgettable choreography, but my nerves, more than one year later, are still living that moment in my memory as fresh as that evening.
Each one had a solo, and after that they performed a choreography together where virtually Ohmori was Ishii's second company; Ishii's movements marked all the performance.
Even with the strength of Ohmori's performance that night, the Japanese public was deeply respectful of the very presence of Mitsutaka Ishii and gave him the biggest applause. This presentation turned into a tribute to this legendary (as I said) Butoh dancer.
I was not allowed to take photos of the presentation, of course, but I could take pictures of the moment of the applause and of a very small improvisation at the end when they thanked the public, plus some photos of the cocktail that night. As an extra information, the theatre was full of dancers, critics and friends from the world of Butoh in Japan, and among them I recognized the also famous Ko Murobushi.
It is a wonderful memory, and I didn't want to miss mentioning it and sharing it, even without a live document of the moment that, I said, I was so impressed by.
At the performance I had the opportunity to see, at the legendary little Terpsichore theatre in Nakano, in May 2011, Masahide Ohmori's stage-presence was what stayed in my mind: in his first choreography of the night, a solo, Ohmori, who has an impressive physique due to a kind of abscess or tumor on the right side of his head, wearing a woman black Victorian style dress, with his face and arms in white makeup and his hair completely scrambled (as is normal in Butoh), showed us a slow walking movement filled with inner tension and with a Wagner's piece as background music. There was simply no way our bodies were pushed backwards by the force he literally threw on to us; those were only 10 or 15 minutes of that unforgettable choreography, but my nerves, more than one year later, are still living that moment in my memory as fresh as that evening.
Each one had a solo, and after that they performed a choreography together where virtually Ohmori was Ishii's second company; Ishii's movements marked all the performance.
Even with the strength of Ohmori's performance that night, the Japanese public was deeply respectful of the very presence of Mitsutaka Ishii and gave him the biggest applause. This presentation turned into a tribute to this legendary (as I said) Butoh dancer.
I was not allowed to take photos of the presentation, of course, but I could take pictures of the moment of the applause and of a very small improvisation at the end when they thanked the public, plus some photos of the cocktail that night. As an extra information, the theatre was full of dancers, critics and friends from the world of Butoh in Japan, and among them I recognized the also famous Ko Murobushi.
It is a wonderful memory, and I didn't want to miss mentioning it and sharing it, even without a live document of the moment that, I said, I was so impressed by.
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| Mitsutaka Ishii (left) and Masahide Ohmori (right). Butoh Performance. Terpsichore, Tokyo. (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011) |
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| Mitsutaka Ishii (right) and Masahide Ohmori (left). Butoh Performance. Terpsichore, Tokyo. (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011) |
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| Mitsutaka Ishii (left) and Masahide Ohmori (right). Butoh Performance. Terpsichore, Tokyo. (By Gustavo Thomas. 2011) |
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