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Japan Dance
Twentieth-century Japanese dance draws on various
traditional
styles and Western classical and avant-garde forms, all
interpretated with the high standards of Japanese schools.
Many
famous dance studios grew from training centers for Kabuki
actor-dancers or derived from famous Kabuki families.
Women dancers
drawing their art from butoh (classical Japanese
dance) were
trained by the Hanayagi school, whose top dancers
performed
internationally. Ichinohe Sachiko choreographed and
performed
traditional dances in Heian court costumes, characterized
by the
slow, formal, and elegant motions of this classical age of
Japanese
culture.
Western schools covered classical ballet, jazz-dance,
and
modern dance and influenced the butoh avant-garde
dance
movement. Ballet was said to have replaced traditional
Japanese
arts, such as flower arranging and the tea ceremony, in
the hearts
of young girls. Prima ballerina Morishita Yoko sat on the
jury for
the Prix de Lausanne Ballet Competition in 1989, held for
the first
time in Tokyo, marking the arrival of Japanese classical
ballet in
the international community. Horiuchi Gen, a 1980 Prix de
Lausanne
winner, became a major soloist with the New York City
Ballet, and
Japanese performers noted for their superb technique were
members
of many major international companies. Modern dance was
performed
early after World War II and was later taught by such
famous
dancers as Eguchi Takaya. The Tokyo Modern Dance School
and the
Ozawa Hisako Modern Dance Company also promoted
avant-garde modern
dance. A wide experimental range within modern dance
occurred from
which choreographer Teshigawara Saburo skillfully drew to
create
multifaceted works for his KARAS Company.
The vital avant-garde butoh dance was a major
development after the war: at least five major schools
performed in
the 1985 Butoh Festival, and there were numerous creative
offshoots. Hijikata Tatsumi was a charismatic dancer who
experimented with different kinds of creative dance to
capture
expressive motions he considered expressly suited to the
Japanese
physiognomy and psyche. He combined eroticism, social
criticism,
and avant-garde theater ideas, and he considered the body
to be a
repository for "stored memories," which could be
metamorphosed into
dance forms. His theories and choreography were carried on
by a
number of famous dancers, who eventually formed their own
major
companies, which were strong in the 1980s and toured
abroad.
Data as of January 1994
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