The spotlight focuses on an old woman, presumably a member of the audience, as she unfurls her parasol and struggles to her feet. Slowly she staggers down the aisle and agonizingly pulls herself onto the stage. Apparently torn between rage and regret, all alone on the boards, she dies.
This is the famous opening of dancer Kazuo Ohno's 1977 piece, "Admiring La Argentina." The performer was 71 years old, and this work opened a new phase of butoh dance. It was also of an intensity that made Ohno's worldwide reputation and led one critic to call him "perhaps one of the greatest dancers of all time."
I was in the audience at the Dai Ichi Seimei Hall in Tokyo that November and remember the audience's astonishment, followed at once by their concern. This was no simple drag act -- Ohno's use of gender was never frivolous. Rather, it was the re-enactment of the theme of all of his work -- death and transfiguration.