Japanese dance students at Stephens College prepare for performance

COLUMBIA — Sixteen pairs of socks danced across the wooden floor, peeking out beneath 16 yukata, a lightweight kimono. The socks pointed and stretched between jazz steps.

But when Sachiyo Ito, whom the students call "sensei," called the class to attention, the white socks with pink heels, the blue anklets, the yellow and blue argyles and the mismatched pink and blue socks all halted, then tucked underneath legs as the students knelt in the Japanese style and bowed until their foreheads touched the floor.

These 16 pairs of socks belong to the senior and second-year students Ito teaches at Stephens College. For one semester, she is teaching three classes on traditional Japanese Kabuki and Noh dance. Some of these students will join students from Ito's freshman and nondance major classes to perform on Friday.

Stephens dance students are required to take one world dance class every semester. For eight weeks this fall, students have been learning Japanese dance from Ito, who has been recognized as a cultural ambassador of Japan for spending 40 years teaching Japanese dance in America.

She runs a dance studio based in New York City and her not-for-profit organization Sachiyo Ito and Company provides one-day and one-week workshops across the country.

Ito began dancing at age 6 in her birthplace, Tokyo. She earned her teaching certificate at 18 and taught while attending college. At 22, she moved to New York, where she's lived since, except for a trip home once a year. She meets with her own sensei for advice, because, as she told her Stephens students, "Learning dance is a lifelong process."

"I am grateful I have someone criticizing me," Ito said. "The worst thing as a dancer is if your teacher says nothing."

Ito teaches Okinawan dance as well as the more commonly known Kabuki and Noh. Okinawa is an island to the south of mainland Japan, and Ito wrote her dissertation on Okinawan dance and has traveled there several times to study.
 
Her classes at Stephens focus mainly on Kabuki, a form of theater originating in the 17th century in Japan. In Kabuki, a shamisen player accompanies a vocalist who sings the words to the play in a dynamic, drawn-out voice. Onstage, men act out the story with dramatic gestures and facial expressions that became Kabuki dance.

Noh theater predates Kabuki and is more symbolic, Ito said.

For the seniors in Ito's class, the Japanese style of dance changes the way they think about movement and technique.