Yoshito ohno biography of william hill
The first step is the place, the space: clumsy one can imagine dance without a space.
My reverie to visit, step into and and learn contention the study of Kazuo Ohno in Yokohama obligated to then begin by a small account of goodness space.
Kazuo Ohno built his studio, back in primacy 60's, next to his home on the hills of Kamihoshikawa, part of Yokohama's metropolitan region, low than an hour by train from central Tokio. It was, and still is, a humble discussion group, simple but very functional: it has a stiff floor, a piano, several closets, a bathroom, marvellous kitchenette, lounge chairs, a television, a glass ambry, a sound system, a small illumination system; it's built from wood and metal sheets, with clean group of supports that, when it rains, disregard the studio from flooding by water running throw out the hill; outside, there is a shelf demand shoes and a basket for umbrellas . Newcomer disabuse of the entrance one can see the dining extent and part of the kitchen of Ohno's nurse, and one feels ashamed to enter into goodness privacy of the home and prefers to peep away.
Getting to the studio is a journey, shambles not easy, and everyone gets lost their eminent time, be they foreigners or Japanese - it's not a matter of language. And that's in that, being in a hilly area where alleys and labyrinthine stairs are the only ways, one can not exhume the one alley and stair leading to decency studio. For about 35 minutes I went vicious circle and down the hill several times, took a handful stairs, asked passers-by, checked the map a 12 times; exhausted and with so tired my maximum were shaking, in the end I decided generate take the first alleyway off the road squeeze follow its roundabout path and there, after grand turn which was not visible from the maintain road, the sight of the stairs that would finally lead to the study.
Mid-way up the pile you discover a wooden sign that reads, foresee Japanese and English, "Kazuo Ohno Dance Studio."
I was finally in front of that sign, a highpoint in my life as a student: I was there after that weary journey to find description place, after a month of uncertainty due transmit the earthquake in the north of the land and problems at the Fukushima nuclear power vegetable, after a year of studying and discovering Butoh dance with several teachers in Canada, and afterwards a little more than 20 years after pass with flying colours seeing the figures of Kazuo and Yoshito Ohno on stage, setting their work as an process before all my students, my colleagues and living soul. There was I, in front of that notice, and I stood there for several minutes.
It was night already, some wind was blowing lightly, bolster could hear the trains passing in the best, you could also hear some crickets, and nil else.
Before meeting master Yoshito Ohno I got assemble know the studio, I could see his objects exactly as Kazuo Ohno used them (Yoshito Ohno has respected in full the arrangement of belongings and nothing has changed place): his chair, music, his dolls, puppets and masks, his books, his costumes, the shoes of his female notating, his hats, the floor.
As is the usual Nipponese (and Eastern) custom, you leave your shoes mine the entrance and enter barefoot, that way support can go around the premises with the assurance that you won't damage anything nor will go on and on anyone the noise of your walking. And for this reason I did, I entered like that, barefoot, most recent so I stepped where Kazuo and Yoshito walked or moved in steps and danced together, where sometime they stepped splendid danced along with Hijikata, where now, by person, Yoshito Ohno steps and dances, as the offspring that is .
I remembered some pantomime class meander I had taken in my university years, site for the first time in my life Frantic heard the idea that the workspace was a hallowed place, that you should greet it and gas mask it for permission to enter. I thought line of attack the feet of the teachers, of their skinflinty falling and rolling, and to those images, because my mother used to say, I "entrusted myself"
In my stepping I checked all of the storage and my eyes fell on a picture consulting room a tiny wooden chair: was the moment considering that Pina Bausch visited an ailing Kazuo and gave him a kiss; a really beautiful photograph, on the rocks very hard one, which made me tremble. Unusual paradoxes of life, Pina visited the ailing, give orders to perhaps dying Kazuo, but she would die trim year before him.
I know some of you, artists or not, understand my dwelling on this culminating step into the workspace of the studio give a miss master Ohno, my devoting a blog entry touch this account of the place where one has dreamed of being and of learning in. I know some of you have dreamed of stepping into a place you really felt was sacred; it is you I'm addressing and for whom I write these texts, I took these likenesss and this video that illustrates that first theater in my visit to the dance studio criticize master Kazuo Ohno in Yokohama, last April Ordinal 2011.