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THE FUNDAMENTALS OF JAPANESE DANCE: KABUKI DANCE. By Hana yagi Chiyo. Trans. by Leonard Pronko and Tomono Takao. Tokyo: Kodansha, 2008. 266 pp. Illustrated in color and black and white. Selected bibliography and index. Paper, $45.00.
Hanayagi Chiyo started her study of Japanese dance or nihon buyo in 1930. In 1951, she opened a studio in Meijio and began researching the fundamentals of Japanese dance. The goal was to create a pedagogical method to provide a technical base for Japanese and non-Japanese dance students. The first version of Nihonbuyo no Kiso Renshu (Fundamentals of Japanese Dance) was published in 1971. A version of the book was published in Chinese in 2002, followed by this English translation by noted kabuki experts Leonard Pronko and Tomono Takao in 2008.
At the beginning of the text, Hanayagi Chiyo notes that each school of Japanese dance has traditionally taught specific dances that embodied the fundamentals of their particular approach. The Hanayagi school taught Kikuzukushi (Chrysanthemum Dance), the Fujima School taught Nanatsu ni Naruko, the Bando school taught Meseya, and so on. Her goal has not been to abandon this approach but to investigate additional methods to cope with the tight schedules of contemporary life in order to, as she phrases it, train dancers that "touch the heart of the spectators" (p. 13). For, in her estimation, "Art expresses the heart, and for the dancer this heart is conveyed through the body" (p. 13). This is a...