Original subtitles

was 22 years older than tatsumi shikata

and was already in his late 40s when

they met and in his 50s

before they began to collaborate

together to create what is now known as

bhuto

kazuo ono did not perform in the first

bhuto performance kanjiki

but his collaboration with tatumi did

begin earlier than that kazuono was in a

piece called the old man in the sea

based on the hemingway story and

apparently according to shita ono

hichikates began to show up to

rehearsals and be again to just give his

advice

and his

role in that performance grew to become

almost of a choreographer even though he

wasn't officially the director of the

piece that was the old man in the sea

and then

tatsumi directed kazuo ono's son yoshita

ono in what's considered the first bhuto

performance kanjiki in 1959 but then in

the

restaging of that first button piece

tatsumijikata insisted that kazuo ono

perform in it and again according to

shita ono this performance was what

changed kazuo ono's approach to dance

before then kazuo ono would perform to

full houses

doing

a more socially acceptable type of dance

again a lot of this is coming from

yushita ono's memoirs about his father

but in

this restaging of kanjiki

kazu ono played a forlorn aging male

prostitute and this

again was a scandalous role for someone

like him to play in japanese society and

it changed his approach to dance again

yoshitono describes it as saying that

before

this performance kazuo onos work was

focused on the perspective of someone

who's alive but afterwards

his performances began to focus from the

perspective of the departed

a little bit abstract way of talking

about it but again this piece marked a

sharp change in his performance and this

began a period of six or seven years

where kazuo ono and tatsumijikata

collaborated very intensely very deeply

in a number of performances but

apparently when they when tatsumiji got

to choreographed

cosmo ono he didn't give him very

detailed instructions it was mostly

enter the stage now walk to the front of

the stage here

and it was up to kazuo ono to

decide and develop what he would do in

the performance and again kazuo owner

would not perform the same thing every

night he would not choreograph things

ahead of time

his art was dedicated to the spontaneous

expression of his soul his spirit

in the moment

for all of his life casual ono's

performances were

always improvised i think i've mentioned

before

i saw casuno performed three times in

new york city in 1999

and it was three nights in a row and

every night he performed differently

different movements different energy he

did some duets with his son yoshita ono

yoshita ono's work was entirely

choreographed so yoshita ona would be

doing the same motions night after night

and his father would

be improvising around him

it was it was astounding and every night

just grew in intensity and emotion and

energy and the third night was just one

of the most one of the most astounding

magical experiences of my life seeing

cosmonaut perform in that third

performance

interestingly enough yoshita ono says

that

his father's dances always began with

words

that he could not even begin to dance

until he had used language and poetry to

the way he or she don't describe is

excavate his inner soul he would take

notebooks read poetry write poetry and

use language in order to begin the

exploration of the depths of his soul

and only after a long period of doing

this would kazuono feel ready to take

this

into

dance into performance into movement

so kazuo ono worked with attitude

hijikata from like i said from 1959

into the mid-60s and then in the end of

the 60s kazuono retired from dance he

was in his 60s at that point i think he

was having a crisis of his own art

he didn't

retire from

creating dance or creating art that he

did retire from public performance he

didn't make a number of films by this

japanese filmmaker chiaki nagano that

were very important in

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bringing kazono to a place where he was

ready to perform again but famously the

incident that inspired him to return to

performance in his 70s at this point was

going to see this art exhibit

and brad is about to leave he saw this

abstract painting that reminded him of

this dancer he had seen in 1929

an argentinian dancer antonia merced

known as argentina

and

seeing this painting reminded of him of

how amazed he had been by her dance and

this inspired him to return to dance in

his 70s he returned to performance and

created some of the most astounding

works of his career he came back first

with this piece called admiring

argentina which was about

that dancer and the way that dancer

affected his life he worked with tatsumi

hishikata again on this piece hishikato

was credited with choreographing that

piece but again choreographing

kazuono it's it's not the way we would

think of it as choreographing because

kazuono relied so much always on his

inner spirit on the spontaneity of the

moment to

to dance that he would rely on the

spontaneity and improvisation

to dance

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me

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casual ono's dance was

devoted to the revealing of

this

of the spiritual he spoke

explicitly about that many times when he

spoke about his dance that it was always

about revealing

the inner life

the spiritual

and that is why improvisation was so

important to him because he understood

that

that were never the same day-to-day in

order to be true to be authentic you

needed to be free in the moment

another thing he would often say is

don't try to be good by which he doesn't

mean

don't try to be morally good but when he

said don't try to be good he meant don't

worry about technique don't try to be

impressive don't try to impress the

audience none of those things are

important pluto is about authenticity

it's about presence

and everything that he did to develop

technique was

not a physical technique

but an expressive technique you need the

physical technique in order to be able

to respond

to

your inner life

but the physical technique was never the

the purpose it was it's only to

allow yourself to be more free to

express your inner life so after casino

came out of retirement he

began to be very active and began to

perform internationally he began to tour

he performed a number of different

pieces my mother the dead sea when i saw

him it was kind of a retrospective

of his work

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again i want to stress that one of the

things that is so important to casual

owners bhutto is a sense of letting go

of yourself that's the reason so many

bhutan artists put on the white makeup

to erase the self and kazuo said

that it's not about freedom to do what

you want

or to do what you think it's freedom

from thought freedom from will and it's

not to escape yourself but to free

yourself from preconceptions from

anything that keeps you from the

spontaneity of the moment

and if you can free yourself from

yourself you can realize your connection

to everything in the universe in that

sense there's a

there's something about bhuto which is

very buddhist the idea that we are all

connected

and that

liberating yourself from your thought

from your will from your intention

opens you up

to realizing that everything

that you're part of everything that you

can be the insect you can be the grass

you can be the wind blowing in the air

and it doesn't mean you're being untrue

to yourself or you're forgetting

yourself

it's a deeper authenticity a deeper

spontaneity

and that's just beginning to get to

the heart of how bhuta is a spiritual

dance

because it's about

revealing it's about revealing

and being present and being in the

moment

because we want to dance with the depth

of emotion that is unusual

for bhuto artists

many bhuta artists

try to

dance in a way that is

less personal mintanaka says i do not

dance in the space i dance the space

and other bhuta artists like hazona

reject that objectification of the body

and want to reveal

a spirit

but to

excavate that's where yoshito use

talking about kazuono excavating his

soul to really explore what that means

that revealing of the spirit

part of it is

understanding how large your spirit is

how all-encompassing it is

sankaijuku talked about finding a way to

dance that liberates yourself from the

nervous agitations of personal

psychology

which doesn't mean you're

running away from yourself

it's your

honing excavating to find out how large

and how all encompassing your spirit is

once you can get away

from the sense of desire sense of

of personal intention if you can move in

a way that's totally authentic

totally spontaneous but moving without

intention

that's the heart of it it takes focus

it takes discipline

it takes

a rigorous exploration of how

large your spirit can be

once you let yourself go

to find something that's deeper

that's more true

that's more spontaneous

and in some ways kazuono

more than any other pluto dancer

really really

embodied that

manifested it

i saw kazu ono perform in 1999 he

actually performed to a piece by elvis

presley i can't help falling in love

with you and here was kazuo ono 92 years

old dancing to elvis singing

take my hand take my whole life too

and it felt like in that moment

kazu ono was offering his entire life in

a gesture of utter love to the audience

take my hand take my whole life too i

can't help

falling in love with you

i just feel very lucky that i got to see

him perform three times

in my life

and that i just got him to see him

perform three nights in a row to see

how alive he was every night

not just how alive he was every night

but how he got deeper and deeper into

the work every night

you know the

every night was more wonderful than the

one before and the last one was just so

astounding

the depth of emotion the depth of

presence the depth of

love of life love of audience

that he was able to express but the love

the pain

it was it was amazing

it was magical

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so

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