In Multimedia Show, Oguri Explores the Body’s Relationship With Nature

Whenever modern dance gets too ingrown, intellectual or diversionary, somebody takes it back to the landscape--to the body experiencing and reflecting the physical realities and processes of nature.

“Height of Sky,” an ongoing project by Oguri and associates, explores and documents perceptual and artistic issues encountered in field trips and then developed in stage performances. “An Interim Report From the Desert,” Saturday at the Electric Lodge in Venice, offered preliminary findings: an exhibition of photographs by Roger Burns and Oguri’s written journals of his Joshua Tree research, along with video sequences credited to Morleigh Steinberg and Charlie Steiner showing Oguri dancing in desert environments.

Video images also initially dominated the live performance. With the audience seated on two sides of the square playing area, hand-held shots of Oguri dancing were projected into a far corner, and from that corner Oguri eventually emerged, wearing khaki that darkened with every drop of sweat that his hourlong solo generated.

Conditioned by his background in neo-Expressionist Japanese butoh, Oguri’s phenomenal concentration and amazing physical control found expression here in the struggle of the body to become upright--a kind of hatching and evolution that began with him in a fetal clump, then stretching out, rising to his knees and finally in low crouch-walks before growing fully vertical 35 minutes later.

Far-away music, nearby water-sounds, occasional gongs and mechanical whirring enhanced the sense of time passing, and this sound-score by Robert Scott and Arnie Saiki complemented Steinberg’s atmospheric lighting.

Overhead hung more than 100 transparent plastic bags filled with water, bags that Oguri gently pushed into motion, one by one, during a final circular walking sequence. Think of him in the middle of a gleaming vortex, but with one low-hanging water-bag dead center staying untouched and absolutely motionless as he moved close to it, below and around it.

How can we move through the natural world, intensely in tune, destroying nothing--not even stirring the air? Oguri knows, and “Height of Sky” is the evidence.