Dancer finds true calling in 'butoh'<\/p>\n
Asip Hasani, Contributor, Yogyakarta<\/p>\n
Shortly before a scheduled performance at an international
\nperforming arts festival in Yogyakarta (The 2nd Jogja Arts
\nFestival 2005), in late September, outstanding butoh dancer
\nMitsuyo Uesugi canceled her planned solo performance, titled
\nMadame Melancholia.<\/p>\n
As an alternative, she, along with four young dancers of her
\nAhiru Dance Studio, performed her new work, titled A Butterfly in
\nthe Dark.<\/p>\n
What lay behind the cancellation had a drastic impact on the
\nmiddle-aged solo dancer.<\/p>\n
"I lost my father earlier this year. Not long after that, my
\nmother passed away too," said Uesugi, who looks younger than her
\nyears.<\/p>\n
The death of her father and mother seems to have caused her a
\ngreat deal of pain.<\/p>\n
Uesugi's parents, an ordinary couple living in Fukuoka, a
\nsmall city-island in southern Japan, gladly enrolled her in a
\nclassical ballet course in the 1950s when she was around seven
\nyears old.<\/p>\n
Ballet and other kinds of modern, Western dance were very
\npopular in Japan at that time. Meanwhile, Japanese traditional
\ndance began to be abandoned by Japanese youngsters.<\/p>\n
Uesugi's parents were so proud of her talent in Western dance
\nthat they allowed her to leave for Tokyo when she was 20 to
\nbecome a professional ballet dancer.<\/p>\n
In Tokyo, she attended many different performances ranging
\nfrom traditional to modern Western dance. She was very interested
\nin then newly founded Japanese contemporary dance, butoh, which
\nwas performed publicly for the first time in 1959.<\/p>\n
She paid special attention to butoh performances by one of the
\nfirst generation of butoh dancers, Kazuo Ohno.<\/p>\n
"Once I saw Ohno's performance, I knew it was the sort of
\nbodily movement I was looking for," said 55-year-old Uesugi,
\nadding that she then made up her mind to go to Ohno and study
\nbutoh under his guidance.<\/p>\n
Her decision to study butoh, which was, at that time,
\nconsidered an odd dance style to many Japanese and, sometimes,
\nidentified with either naked or topless dancers, upset her
\nparents, who were devout Buddhists. From that point, her
\nrelationship with her parents became very strained.<\/p>\n
For years, Uesugi and her parents did not communicate with
\neach other. However, about two years ago she was invited by a
\nfestival organizer to perform at an arts festival in her
\nhometown, Fukuoka.<\/p>\n
Witnessed by her father, there in the festival Uesugi
\nperformed topless one of her most praised works titled She. To
\nher surprise, her father came to her after the performance and
\nsaid that he had just seen a great dance performance by his
\ndaughter. The relationship with her parents was back on the
\nrails.<\/p>\n
The happiness, however, did not last long: Last year her
\nfather died. Shortly afterward, she also lost her mother.<\/p>\n
Uesugi said that she did not know exactly what happened to her
\nbut she felt unsettled since her loss of her parents. That was
\nwhy she decided not to perform the solo Madame Melancholia in
\nYogyakarta.<\/p>\n
Uesugi is a famous second-generation butoh dancer. Her butoh
\ntutor, Ohno, is one of three important originators of the art
\nform. She started to study butoh under Ohno's tutelage in 1970
\nand since then accompanied Ohno to most of his performances for
\naround 15 years.<\/p>\n
In 1988, Uesugi moved to France and gave many solo butoh
\nperformances, as well as being involved in various plays and
\ncollaborative dances with French dancers.<\/p>\n
She returned to Japan and founded her own dance company, Ahiru
\nDance Studio, in 1994. In 2000, she began regularly to hold dance
\nworkshops at national choreography centers throughout France.<\/p>\n
Among other works of hers are A Kettle and Scream (2004), part
\nof the Madame Melancholia series and A Love Supreme (2004), a
\nduet piece with another famous butoh dancer, Yukio Waguri, in
\nNeural Weighting-beam (2005).<\/p>\n
In 1988, her critically acclaimed solo piece, She, was
\ncommissioned at theater festivals in European countries, the
\nUnited States and elsewhere.<\/p>\n
She performed Nega-reality in the Kazuo Ohno Festival in 2004
\nin Yokohama city. The opportunity reminded her of the years under
\nOhno's tutelage. Formless movement is a butoh characteristic she
\nlearned from Ohno, a style referred to by critics as the "dance
\nof light" to distinguish it from ankoku butoh ("dance of
\ndarkness"), which was established by another butoh originator,
\nTatsumi Hijikata and his student, dancer Yukio Waguri.<\/p>\n
"Despite his formless movement on the dance stage, Ohno's
\ndance produces a strong reaction in onlookers that can make
\npeople cry," said Uesugi.<\/p>\n
"He also provides me with an example I want to follow -- to
\ncontinue dancing as long as I can. Ohno still dances today at 99,
\nsaid the unmarried Uesugi.<\/p>",
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