School of Music

Oguri will come to the Experimental Voice Workshop to work with the students on body movement and body manipulation to link it to the process of phonation. Comfortable clothes to move are necessary.

Native of Japan, Oguri’s inspiration to dance came after meeting Butoh founder Hijikata Tatsumi. He started training/performing in 1985 with famed dancer Min Tanaka's company, Mai-Juku and participated in founding Body Weather Farm. Oguri also began performing solo dance in the avant-garde scene in Tokyo. He also designed the lighting for Min Tanaka’s choreographies. He practiced traditional organic farming, experiencing the rhythms and cycles of this most human lifestyle. This connection of the human body to nature is a foundation of Oguri’s dance. Oguri moved to Los Angeles in 1991 and joined Roxanne Steinberg sharing Body Weather Laboratory. For over 30 years, Oguri has been teaching, creating and producing dance and multi-media works incorporating his own large-scale set/sculpture installations and his dramatic, often chiaroscuro lighting in formal theater settings and site-specific venues worldwide. He continues to investigate the relationship of dance to environment and the boundaries between performer and audience. He has developed collaborative projects with musicians, sculptors, painters, and poets, using literature, daily life imagery and simple materials to transform space and time with dance. He actively brings dance to the wider community. In 2011, Oguri formed ARCANE Collective with Morleigh Steinberg, touring full productions and live concepts.

Oguri has received grants and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, California Arts Council, The Annenberg Foundation, the New England Foundation for the Arts, National Dance Project, the Rockefeller Foundation, The City of Los Angeles Department of Cultural Affairs, The Getty Center, the James Irvine Foundation/Dance USA, Japan Foundation, USA Doris Duke Fellow 2018, among others.