Butoh Master Oguri Strives Toward Symbiosis

The mood of the audience in the late afternoon at the Electric Lodge in Venice on Sunday was that of a group of people relieved to be in out of the rain.

Whether they all were sucked into “the hours of the season,” a 60-minute improvisational performance by butoh master Oguri, percussionist Adam Rudolph, saxman Joseph Jarman and poet Robert Wisdom is doubtful: Titters, shushing and the bleating of a cell phone periodically broke the mesmerizing effect Oguri usually has on his acolytes.

A series of seven performances over three days, “hours” was to relate to the changes in atmosphere of each session: By taking into account the space, the body, the artists and audience temperament, the performance and dynamics of the day were meant to merge, well, organically.

The penultimate show did not quite congeal, however. Oguri, shirtless in a khaki suit, moved with concentrated control: From marching barefoot across the floor and slapping himself while making repeated arm gestures as if in the throes of full-body carpal tunnel syndrome, to arching backward in seemingly impossible poses, he ultimately worked up a gigantic sweat that fell like rain onto the stage.

A cool counterpart to the real rain, whose sound on the roof was the only evidence--or intrusion--of nature into the black box setting.

The evening performance was another matter. Exit Wisdom and enter Dawn Saito, an exquisite dancer clad in a satin slip, whose every bend of knee and curl of toe matched Oguri by degrees.

Call them the Fred and Ginger of butoh: Perfectly matched, they swayed, they squatted, they appeared suspended in time and space, enhanced by the astonishing sounds of Rudolph’s many gongs and drums, ecstatically peaking when Jarman blew two saxes simultaneously, fading, finally, with Jarman intoning a kind of Buddhist prayer.

The mood, sublime; the art, authentic. The audience? Sated.