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East and West in the Work of Michio Ito

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2014

Mary-Jean Cowell  and
Satoru Shimazaki
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Extract

The integration of Oriental and Occidental elements, as Michio Ito perceived them, was central to his vision of art and life. “In my dancing,” he said, “it is my desire to bring together the East and the West. My dancing is not Japanese. It is not anything—only myself”.

Ito thus described his dancing in a newspaper interview in August, 1917, less than a year after his arrival in America. Those who view the individual as inevitably embedded in his specific cultural and historical environment may find Ito's description idealistic but naive. He was, after all, only twenty-three. Certainly, Ito was inescapably an Oriental from the standpoint of the Western formulated Orientalism described by Edward Said. Moreover, Ito's prior experience in Europe had already acquainted him with the Orientalist tendency to lump together all Eastern cultures, assuming, for example, that values and behavior of Japanese, Indians, and Egyptians must be similar if not identical. As the only Asian among well over three hundred students at the Dalcroze Institute, Ito noted that, despite his protests, other students regarded what he said and did as typical of all Eastern people as well as all Japanese. Ito, then, was not naively oblivious to contemporary stereotypes of Orientals.

Ito's concept and practice of his art reflects some aspects of Said's Orientalism while evading others. This is partially because Said's study admittedly emphasizes British and French scholarship and imperialist politics, particularly in relation to the Arab world. In this Orientalist tradition, the European saw the Oriental as essentially different and inferior, the passive “other” incapable of self-government despite past glories of Eastern philosophy and art. Consequently, Orientalism logically predicted and justified the colonization of the colonized. Moreover, since the East was thought to have unchanging characteristics, this dominant-subservient relationship was assumed static until the dissolution of the imperialist empires in the twentieth century.

Type
Articles
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 26 , Issue 2 , Fall 1994 , pp. 11 - 23
Copyright
Copyright © Congress on Research in Dance 1994

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References

Notes

1. Underhill, Harriette, “Michio Itow,” New York Tribune, Sunday August 19, 1917: Sec. 4.Google Scholar

2. Said, Edward W., Orientalism (New York: Vintage Books, Random House, Inc., 1979)Google Scholar; see especially 1–6, 21–22, 37–38.

3. Senda, Koreya, “Atogaki—yume to genjitsu” (Postscript—Dream and Reality), in Caldwell, Helen, Itō Michio: Hito to Geijutsu, trans. Nakagawa, Einosuke (Tokyo: Hayakawa Publishing, Inc., 1985), 178. Hereafter, “Atogaki.“Google Scholar

4. Orientalism, 4, 6, 7, 38–40, 43–44, 96.

5. Said, Edward W., “Representing the Colonized: Anthropology's Interlocutors,” Critical Inquiry 15 (Winter, 1989): 213.Google Scholar

6. Gray, Madeleine, “Eastern Art Spiritual, Western Art Material, Says Michio Itow,” Musical America 27/6 (December 8, 1917): 9.Google Scholar

7. Porter, Keyes, “As an Oriental Looks at Art,” The Dance (January 1926): 33.Google ScholarPubMed

8. See especially 166, 169–174 in “Atogaki.“

9. Caldwell, Helen, Michio Ito: The Dancer and His Dances (Berkeley and LosAngeles: University of California Press, 1977), 45, 47 (photo), 48. Hereafter MI. Google Scholar

10. Sherwood, C. Blythe, “A Dream of Dreams,” Shadowland (November 1919): 12, 13.Google Scholar

11. Ibid.

12. “As an Oriental Looks at Art,” 62.

13. “Eastern Art Spiritual, Western Art Material, Says Michio Itow,” 9.

14. MI, 42–45.

15. “Atogaki,” 163–164.

16. For lists of dance concerts and productions in which Ito was variously involved, see Appendices 2 and 3 in MI, 125–141.

17. In “As an Oriental Looks at Art” Ito says: “From Paris I went to Dresden where I studied for three years at the Dalcroze School…” (The Dance, 34). Caldwell, using Ito as a source, says he studied at Hellerau from 1912–1914 (MI, 39). Senda establishes that Ito was interviewed for admission to the Dalcroze School on Aug. 9, 1913, and moved to Hellerau on Aug. 12 to begin classes (“Atogaki,” 168). With the outbreak of World War I, Ito left Germany on August 23, 1914. For Ito's early training in Japan, see “Atogaki,” especially 157–164, 182–184. A magazine article by Ito's younger sister mentions his brief study of Japanese classical dance, odati ( Nakagawa, Nobuko, “Ani Michio Ito no kicho,” Fujin Saron, 1 May 1931: 153)Google Scholar.

18. “A Dream of Dreams,” 13. Clandon, Laura, “The Legacy of Carnegie Hall: Part I,” Dance Magazine (February 1960): 47.Google Scholar Como, William, “Virginia Lee's Scrapbook of an Era,” Dance Magazine (November 1964): 50, 51.Google Scholar

19. “As an Oriental Looks at Art,” 62.

20. Koritz, Amy, “Dancing the Orient for England: Maud Allen's ‘The Vision of Salome’,” Theatre Journal, March 1994.Google Scholar Koritz describes varied perceptions of Allen's dancing. Her striking hand and arm movements distinguished her style from the emphasis on feet expected in Western dance, yet her movement was not consistently identified as Oriental.

21. “Michio Ito, Japanese Dancer to Give Three Recitals in New York,” Musical America 95/18 (3 November 1927), 40. Perhaps Ito had read Isadora Duncan's essay, “Movement Is Life” in which she asserts: “Nature must be the source of all art, and dance must make use of nature's forces in harmony and rhythm, but the dancer's movement will always be separate from any movement in nature” (Reprinted in The Art of the Dance, ed. Sheldon Cheney [New York: Theatre Arts Books, 1969”, 79). See note 8, 146. Apparently Duncan used this essay, in various forms, for recital programs. Her essay, “The Great Source,” reprinted in the same text (101–104), includes similar comments.

22. Enters, Angna, Silly Girl (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1944), 109, 113.Google Scholar

23. MI, 77, 78.

24. Enters, 112, 113, 121. Koner, Pauline, Solitary Song (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1989), 25, 26.Google Scholar

25. MI, 29.

26. Maki, Ryuko, Ito's post World War II protégé and master teacher, instructed Satoru Shimazaki in this treatment of the B sequence.Google Scholar

27. Enters, 108–109.

28. Koner, 24, 26, 27.

29. Spector, Irwin, Rhythm and Life: The Work of Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, (Stuyvesant, New York: Pendragon Press, 1990), 115, 132.Google Scholar In a note on Ito's gesture sequences, Caldwell writes: “Ito's ten gestures had two forms, which he termed ‘A’ and ‘B’ or ‘masculine’ and ‘feminine’ or ‘objective’ and ‘subjective.’ He was influenced in this systemization by Dalcroze …” (MI, note 47, 157). Caldwell, however, makes no mention of yin-yang in relation to the A and B sequences, although she points out similarities between Ito's work and Chinese and Hindu thought elsewhere in her book, e.g., 5, 7, 8.

30. See, for instance, 18–27, 66–70 in Jaques-Dalcroze, Émile, Eurhythmies, Art and Education, trans. Rothwell, Frederick (New York: Benjamin Blom, Inc., 1972).Google Scholar

31. Koner, 27.

32. Eurhythmies, Art and Education, 23.

33. The Art of the Dance, 103.

34. Dalcroze, , Rhythm, Music, and Education, trans. Rubenstein, Harold F., rev. ed. (London: The Dalcroze Society, 1980), 136.Google Scholar Duncan felt that the Dalcroze approach lacked inspiration and life, grouping it with “those systems of dancing that are only arranged gymnastics, only too logically understood” (The Art of the Dance, 53).

35. Eurhythmics, Art and Education, 186. Dalcroze also wrote of “the courageous and noble efforts of Isadora Duncan and her disciples to restore plastic purity, by the idealisation of the quasinudity of the human body…” (Rhythm, Music mid Education, 145). Selma Landen Odom describes the interest of Dalcroze teaching assistants like Annie Beck, Marie Rambert, and Suzanne Perrottet in the work of Duncan, the Wiesenthal sisters and Maud Allen, summarizing: “The Jaques-Dalcroze method was shaped during the years when the dance innovators flourished, and their presence no doubt confirmed and influenced his work. Within three or four years the formal exercises and Delsarte-style gestures that first characterized rhythmic gymnastics seem to have expanded to include more natural, flowing, and subtle movement invention” (“Wigman at Hellerau,” Ballet Review 14, [Summer 1986], 43). Advanced Dalcroze students and assistant teachers often performed demonstrations of the method in Duncanesque tunics (41, 51), and students worked barefoot and briefly clad in the rhythmic gymnastics classes (45).

36. This observation is based on my own lessons from Shimazaki and on his training with Maki.

37. Spector, , Rhythm and Life, 132–133.Google Scholar

38. The drawings by Paulet Thévenaz (Figures 3, 4, 5, and 6) are reproduced from Eurhythmies, Art and Education, 27, 86, 87, 24, and 80 by permission from Ayer Company Publishers, North Stratford, Hampshire. Photos for Figures 1 and 2 are reproduced from Michio Ito: The Dancerand His Dances by permission from University of California Press, Berkeley, California.

39. “Wigman at Hellerau,” 47.

40. In 1991 Selma Odom created choreography for a production of Gluck's Orpheus and Eurydice inspired by the 1913 collaboration of Dalcroze and Appia. In the absence of anything like an annotated score or rehearsal notes, she based her work on interviews with original participants, visual materials, and written documents such as reviews, newspapers and journal articles, letters and memoirs. In her program notes, Odom writes of the 1913 production: “Responsibility for the choreography belonged to Annie Beck, who made processions and classical bas-relief poses for the Mourners: contracted, angular postures and swarming groups for the Furies: calm walking and arm gestures for the Blessed Spirits.” I am indebted to Dr. Odom for this and other information generously shared. See also “Wigman at Hellerau,” 42, 43.

41. “Atogaki,” 174–176.

42. Rhythm, Music and Education, 133.

43. Ibid., 145.

44. Ibid., 135.

45. Ibid., 175.

46. Eurhythmies, Art and Education, 186.

47. This dance has a variety of titles: for instance, Revolutionary, according to Satoru Shimazaki; and Etude, in the credits of the Trailblazers video (Trailblazers of Modern Dance, Indiana University Audio-Visual Center, 1977). Duncan specialist Kay Bardsley notes that there are two works currently in the Duncan repertory known as Revolutionary Etude, this one to Scriabin and one to Chopin. Bardsley also says that Duncan's standard practice was to use the title of the music on her programs. The best efforts of Patricia Rader (research staff at the New York City Performing Arts Library) failed to locate a program with Isadora's original title for the dance. Ms. Rader found a program for a performance on December 8, 1922, in Detroit which included Three Etudes by Scriabin, but undoubtedly this was not Isadora's first performance of the dance.

48. Craig, Gordon, “Isadora Duncan: A BBC Radio Talk,” Your Isadora: The Love Story of Isadora Duncan and Gordon Craig, ed. Steegmuller, Frances (New York: Random House and The New York Public Library, 1974), 360.Google Scholar

49. MI, 98.

50. Ibid.

51. This is Caldwell's impression, and it seems to be true of his work in the United States. I wonder, however, if Ito improvised when he performed at London society parties in 1914 and 1915, since he was closer to his Dalcroze training. Part of this training required students to improvise responses to music. Caldwell's quote from Lady Ottoline Morrell's memoirs certainly indicates that Ito seemed to improvise (Ibid., 41–42).

52. “Music Visualization,” The Denishawn Magazine 1, (Spring 1925). Reprinted in Dance as a Theatre Art, ed. Cohen, Selma Jeanne, 2d ed. (Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton Book Company, 1992), 130.Google Scholar Forfuller discussion of St. Denis's music visualizations, see Shelton, Suzanne, Ruth St. Denis: A Biography of the Divine Dancer (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1990), 147–156, 180, 183.Google Scholar

53. “Music Visualization,” 130.

54. Ibid., 132.

55. Ibid., 130. Elsewhere St. Denis identifies Duncan in speaking of her occasional “complete disregard of the music” when she danced Schubert's Unfinished Symphony. “The audience was enraptured, and I am sure most of the unthinking ones felt they had witnessed a wonderful piece of musical visualization, but that was exacdy what they had not seen. She had interpreted and had reacted to the strains of this exquisite symphony, but she had in no way maintained a consistent visualization of its structure or rhythm” ( St. Denis, Ruth, An Unfinished Life [New York: Harper & Brothers, 1939], 215).Google Scholar

56. Graham and Ito also performed together in the Greenwich Village Follies (1923–25), and both taught at the Anderson-Milton School and later at the Neighborhood Playhouse ( Jowitt, Deborah, Time and the Dancing Image [Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1989], 215).Google Scholar

57. “Music Visualization,” 133, 134.

58. MI, 3.

59. In her essay on St. Denis's “Radha,” Jane Desmond points out: “Study of performance can include not only historical analysis of visual representations, their construction and reception, but also consideration of the special case of construction of meaning through display of the body—a body that is at once “real” and “representational” as it exists in performance” (“Dancing Out the Difference: Cultural Imperialism and St. Denis's, Ruth “Radha” of 1906,” Signs 17, [Autumn 1991]: 28).Google Scholar

60. MI, 13, 17.

61. Koner describes some of Ito's works as “neo-ethnic.” Speaking of “his version of a Javanese dance,” she writes: “Ito made no claim to authenticity. He drew on the essential quality, not the actual steps.” Of Ito's famous Tango, she says: “…he was the essence of a Spanish dancer without doing a single true Spanish step” (Koner, 25, 29).

62. For an excellent discussion of 19th- and early 20th-century dance reflecting fascination with the Orient, see Jowitt's, Time and the Dancing Image, 49–65, 105–147.Google Scholar

63. Ruth, Pickering, “The Dance: Doris Humphrey and Others,” The Nation 127/3308 (2 November 1928): 580.Google Scholar

64. M. W., , “Hilde Gad, Dancer, Fails to Impress in New York Debut,” New York Herald-Tribune, 14 November 1927.Google Scholar

65. MI, 44–45.

66. “As an Oriental Looks at Art,” 62.

67. “Eastern Art Spiritual, Western Art Material,” 9. Ito already had made his case for the East-West blend in his work in England. An advertisement for May, 1915, performances at the London Coliseum headlined, “The Famous Male Dancer Micho Itow Who Has Created A Furore In Society With His Repertoire Of Harmonized Europo-Japanese Dances” (MI, 37).

68. Vera, Caspary, “The Dance Reviewed: The Seventh Veil, Ito, and Gavrilov Intime,” The Dance Magazine (July 1927): 26.Google Scholar

69. Ibid., 59.

70. Naima, Prevots, Dancing in the Sun (Ann Arbor and London: UMI Research Press, 1987), 193.Google Scholar

71. Nobuko, Nakagawa, “Ani Michio Ito no kicho,” 155.Google Scholar

72. Orientalism, 43, 44.

73. Rhythm and Life, 158–159.

74. Harriette Underhill, 2.