Word: ballets
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...latest step in Japan's Westernization is an entrechat. In Tokyo alone there are an estimated 600 ballet schools, where round-faced girls in soup-bowl haircuts and black leotards are stretching their bodies at exercise bars. On the sidelines most mothers nod approvingly, but some older Japanese nurse a suspicion that the strange movements will make the girls barren. Ballet movies are a sensation, and at least one of them (Red Shoes) started a teen-age craze .for carrying ballet slippers, whether the owners were studying ballet or not. Dozens of school companies present productions whenever they...
Changing Muscles. Ballet first touched Japan in the '20s, made its mark with a tour by the late, swanlike Anna Pavlova, but Nippon stayed off its toes until after World War II. In 1946 the occupation forces blessed a performance of Swan Lake-all four acts of it-staged by a pickup Japanese troupe. It was headed by a tigerish young dancer named Masahide Komaki, who had studied ballet with Russian refugees. The production had a grand total of only 22 dancers (v. 64 for Sadler's Wells' Swan Lake today). Optimistically booked for one week...
...limb renders the Japanese dancers strong on point, and their natural determination makes for well-disciplined performers. And some observers have noted that the new generation's proportions are closer to the long-legged Western ideal. The cultural hurdle has been even more imposing than the structural difficulties. Ballet plots, often obscure at their Occidental best, are even more obscure in Tokyo. Sample English-language ballet program notes of the Fourth Symphony (Tchaikovsky): "People of city and villages gathering for celebration of spring ... A GIRL and her hero are among them. Something bad worries a GIRL. Her YOUNG...
Fistic Assist. At 37, Dancer Komaki has made his troupe ("Le Ballet Komaki") the largest and best-disciplined in Japan, introduced some two dozen more or less standard Western ballets to the country, e.g., Nutcracker, Coppélia, Petrouchka, Lilac Garden, and himself partnered Visiting Star Nora Kaye...
Will Japan ever wholly succumb to Western ballet and give up its traditional dancing? Not likely, thinks another recent visitor, Ballerina Alexandra Danilova. "Our dance is like flower, open out this way," she says, assisting her Russian accent by opening out her fists. Then, closing them again, she added: "Japanese dance is like flower, closing up this...