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.
"It's emotional," she said. "It's acting using your expression."
Ito said her greatest challenge of teaching American students is to stop them from "moving around so much." She stressed to her students to be centered and control their movements.
In a dance called "Sakura" about one of Japan's most famous cultural symbols, the cherry blossom, she reprimanded the class for being too stiff. The yukata requires tiny steps, but Ito wanted the movements to flow.
The first thing the students practice is walking. Wearing a yukata or kimono makes walking more difficult because it constricts leg movement, forcing the wearer to take short, deliberate steps, heel to toe, placing one foot directly in front of the other.
"It's really fun to learn different types of dance," Kelsea Deshazo said. She said that the dance is challenging but that Ito is a patient teacher.
"It's a fun location to teach in," she said. "It's rare for the Midwest to have contact with Japanese culture."
As part of class, she showed videos of Noh and Kabuki performances and talked about the history and costumes of the theaters. She also teaches her students about Japanese art, culture and aesthetics.
"Dance is not just steps but also learning about life," she said.
She sees dance as a way to share time with others in a "beautiful and spiritual" way.