Every Body is A Perfect Body

While doing research for an upcoming project, I found a short, helpful article on the development and aesthetics of the avant-garde Japanese dance form called Butoh ("earth dance") by actor and movement artist Don McLeod. I was especially fascinated by McLeod's discussion of the Butoh acceptance of age. In Western dance forms, performers are typically expected to embody refined ideals of appearance, technical ability and power and, as a result, have a shorter shelf-life.

"Most ballet and jazz dancers are sadly sent to pasture in their mid-thirties, and are soon passed over for younger, more physically capable models," McLeod writes. "With butoh, the mature body brings as much or more to the performance as does the youthful body." He cites the great Butoh pioneer Kazuo Ohno who, at the time of McLeod's writing, was 96 and still performing. (He is now 100.) "His withered, aged body is his canvas and he paints with great beauty upon it."

To read McLeod's "An Art Form in Transition," click here.

New York-based dancer-choreographer and writer Maura Nguyen Donohue also wrote a wonderful report on Ohno's 96th birthday party in Yokohama and reminiscence of some of his performances. Click here.

Of related interest:

See my recent remarks about a master class in Katherine Dunham dance at the Ailey Studios. Click here.

Tobi Tobias's review of Mikhail Baryshnikov's recent performance with Hell's Kitchen Dance on Voice of Dance.

(c) 2007 Eva Yaa Asantewaa