Purple Magazine
— Purple #43 S/S 2025
The Tokyo Diary Issue
kazuo ohno
BUTOH DANCE
Butoh, the dance of darkness, is a form of avant-garde dance theater created in the 1950s by Kazuo Ohno and Tatsumi Hijikata.
Ohno lived through the bombing of Hiroshima, and his work is inflected with imagery of death and primal strife, his hypnotic dances and gestures forming a kind of exorcistic communion with invisible yet omnipresent spirits. Mixing dramatic theatricality with influences of Kabuki, surrealism, and Eastern mysticism, Ohno’s choreography channeled the nature of longing and loss through hauntingly expressive movements. Influenced by his own spiritual practice and Shintoist animism, his creative process reflected his adage that “form comes by itself.”
In 2001, although he had lost his ability to walk, Ohno continued performing and developed ways to express himself through dance, solely by moving his hands. He died in Yokohama at the age of 103 and continues to inspire many contemporary artists, including Anohni and Kembra Pfahler.
