Dancing Between Worlds: Hana Umeda’s Art of Movement [INTERVIEW]

sadayakko_fot.karolina_gorzelanczyk_detal_.jpg, default, Hana Umeda in ‘Sada Yakko’, Komuna/Warszawa, photo: Karolina Gorzelańczyk

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She’s half-Polish, half-Japanese (the daughter of Japanese philologist Dr Agnieszka Żuławska-Umeda and entrepreneur and Solidarity activist Yoshiho Umeda). Hana Umeda, a dancer and performer, a doctoral student at the Faculty of Theatre and Performance at the University of Warsaw’s Institute of Polish Culture, is the only person in Poland teaching nihon buyo. What is this dance, and why is it so difficult for the Polish mind to understand?

Marcelina Obarska: You’re a woman of two homelands, but the traditional Japanese dance is something you discovered quite late, only learning it as an adult. How did this happen?

Hana Umeda: I moved to Japan as a 19-year-old for two years, and it so happens that my family, the Kamoji family, has worked for a kabuki theatre for generations. They’re wigmakers, so they often work with buyo dancers. Thanks to my family’s mediation, I was introduced to my first dance mistress, whose dance name is Nishikawa Fukushino. I practiced buyo very intensely throughout those two years in Japan, and I continued my practice in Poland after my return. I’ve gone to Japan for a month or two each year for 14 years, and for the past 5 years I’ve had a new mistress, Hanasaki Tokijyo, who practices jiutamai, a type of classical Japanese dance meant solely for women and suited to the needs of the female body.

MO: Why did you decide to become a teacher of this dance?

HU: It was my first mistress who suggested I start teaching. At that time, a dozen or so years ago, nihon buyo was completely absent from Poland, despite the fact that it first appeared here at the beginning of the 20th century thanks to Sada Yakko [a dancer and geisha who came here while on her European tour in the early 1900s, ed.]. As far as I know, except for visiting mistresses, no one taught this dance in Europe at that time, which is why it was important for my mistress that I try to promote it in Poland. It’s currently going well largely thanks to the ‘blessing’ of my mistress, Ms Hanasaki, who has regularly visited Poland for 5 years with her performances and workshops.

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Hana Umeda, ‘HanaUmeda/SaddaYakko’, Komuna/Warszawa, photo: Karolina Gorzelańczyk

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MO: There are two currents of nihon buyo: theatrical and scenic, as well as intimate, performed by geishas for a group of men. But what’s at the core of this dance? What are its characteristic features?

HU: It’s a complicated matter. The term ‘nihon buyo’ appeared at the end of the 19th century, while the terms used later were ‘odori’ and ‘mai’ – two different words meaning ‘dance’. ‘Odori’ was used to describe a current that originated from kabuki theatre, meant to be seen in a theatre, where from the first half of the 17th century only men perform. At the end of the 19th century, women also started to practice nihon buyo, but at its core it’s a form invented and developed by men, often by onnagata actors – meaning those taking on female roles. Meanwhile, the jiutamai dance belongs to the other current – mai. This word is associated with nō theatre, in which movement is much more soulful, gentler. The word ‘mai’ is related to the Kansai region, where Kioto and Osaka are located, while ‘odori’ is linked to the old Edo region, which is today’s Tokyo. Jiutamai is often described as one of the subtypes of nihon buyo, even though their origins are completely different. It’s a dance initially practiced by girls from good families as an alternative to martial arts, which would only be practiced by boys. At first it was simply a form of activity permitted to girls, a bit like gymnastics. With time, it became the dance of geishas and remains so today.

MO: You’ve developed your own way of teaching the traditional Japanese dance. Could you tell me about it?

HU: While teaching dance and Japan’s traditional arts in general, teachers mostly don’t explain anything. It’s often said that students should essentially ‘steal’ the skills from their teacher and that they won’t get anything handed to them on a silver platter. Indeed, the so-called Japanese mentality encourages the student to humbly give themselves over to the master or mistress and spend long years moving forward very slowly. The Japanese also say that you should think about dance not by using your head but rather by using your body – more specifically, your belly. When I started teaching, I quickly noticed that cultural differences make it difficult for my Polish students to embrace such a model of learning. I therefore needed to alter my approach and explain to them – perhaps in a slightly more rational way – subsequent elements of the dance. I came up with exercises that could later help them copy complicated choreographies. Such a method has its pros and cons. One of the pros is that Polish students understand the rules of nihon buyo better. The main con, however, is that when explaining it that way, it really is difficult to liberate yourself from that undesirable habit of ‘thinking with your head’, which influences how the body functions. Using this method of teaching, much more effort needs to be expended later to integrate this head (the mind) with the rest of the body.

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Hana Umeda in jiutamai dance, photo: Karolina Gorzelańczyk

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MO: After all, Polish and Japanese bodies differ from each other: they grow up in different conditions…

HU: Not only do they grow up differently, but they’re also built differently. Poles have much longer limbs. Polish women usually have longer legs, due to which their centre of gravity is placed slightly higher, making it much more difficult to assume the correct posture while dancing. Undoubtedly, cultural habits are also a factor – for instance, the way we sit, which shapes the way we use our legs. This creates a certain barrier which we need to start overcoming at the very beginning of the learning process. Japanese culture attaches much more importance to stillness, much rarer in Poland and Europe, hence it takes a lot of effort to attain. I have a feeling that, since in the Japanese dance school I also had to deal with the difficulties springing from my own habits and build, it’s easier for me to overcome such obstacles together with my students.

MO: What’s the role of traditional dance in contemporary Japan?

HU: Nihon buyo is performed in kabuki theatre, while jiutamai is practiced by geishas. Outside this context, the cultural meaning of this form of movement has changed a lot over the past few years. When I started to learn, among my mistress’ students there were maybe three girls my age (between the ages of 15 and 30) in the entire school (and these are ancestral schools). The rest, a few dozen people, were retired ladies in their 60s or older. For a long time, young people didn’t consider traditional dance appealing. That’s started to change lately, and more and more young Japanese people are turning to traditional culture.

MO: Are there many Poles willing to dance nihon buyo?

HU: The number is slowly increasing. Right now, I have a few regular students in Warsaw; there are also people who come to me from Kraków. There aren’t many, but I like their persistence in practicing the dance. I have students who’ve been coming to me for 10 years, even though progress is barely noticeable at the beginning and the dance requires a huge amount of patience.

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Hana Umeda in jiutamai dance, photo: Karolina Gorzelańczyk

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MO: Is there anyone among your students who may become your successor in the future?

HU: It’s hard to talk about a successor at this point, but I could point to two people I have high hopes for. One of them is Natalia Jarzębska, who performed with me in the show SadaYakko in Komuna/Warszawa. Natalia currently lives in Zürich, where she’s working on her academic career, but she’s also a very talented dancer. My first mistress took her under her wing a few years ago during Natalia’s one-year stay in Japan.

The other one is my niece, who began her practice 10 years ago, as a 5-year-old child. Thanks to that, she avoided the necessity of overcoming the inborn habits of motion and mastered her dancing technique perfectly. She’s doing very well during performances and masters new choreographies with ease.

MO: Traditional Japanese dance always tells a story. What kind of stories are they?

HU: There are all kinds; the range of topics is huge. The choreography is usually accompanied by lyrical texts, some of which are myths, stories from nō theatre, kabuki theatre, even cheery folk songs. The dance I’m currently learning, Kiko no tsuyu, which means ‘Dew on Chrysanthemum Flowers’, is an expression of deep emptiness and sorrow following the death of a loved one. It refers to human life being as ephemeral as morning dew. The heroine, filled with grief, decides to spend the rest of her life in solitude, living as a nun.

Movement is not just an illustration. In fact, it’s complementary to the lyrical text we see in the song that accompanies the dance.

Thumbnail — Hana Umeda in jiutamai dance, photo: Karolina Gorzelańczyk

MO: Is this sort of poetic narrative easily digestible for a Polish or, more generally, for a European viewer?

HU: I think it’s difficult to understand. During my own dance performances, I try to prepare an introduction. These narratives conveyed by dance could be tough to comprehend for current Japanese audiences as well. Similarly with the singing – Japanese people aren’t always able to grasp the lyrics nowadays. Thankfully, some of the movements are expressive enough, and it’s relatively easy to see what’s happening. For instance, it’s easy to see that here the heroine is writing a letter or drinking sake. However, cultural differences very often make it impossible to decipher the performance easily. Such is the case, for instance, with smoking tobacco; the dance depicts it as smoking the kiseru pipe, along with all the actions related to it. First, we open the tobacco box, then we light the pipe with a cinder, puff away, flick the tobacco… If someone is used to the fact that smoking tobacco means smoking a cigarette, it’ll be difficult for them to decipher this sequence of movements. That’s why I always do my best to tell the viewers what they’re about to see beforehand.

MO: The Japanese language is another thing you learned as an adult. Was it a difficult process? I know that Japanese wasn’t spoken in your family home.

HU: I attended a language school in Japan for a year. Throughout the following year I simply used it on a daily basis. The reason it was easier than learning it in Poland is that very few people speak English in Japan, so if you want to make the most of living there, using Japanese is key. I was also lucky enough to have family there, who have a positive attitude towards me and who made it easier for me to learn by talking to me in a very elegant variety of Japanese, for which I’m very grateful to them.

MO: Elegant meaning ‘pure’, with no colloquialisms?

HU: Japanese grammar has a very extensive system of honorifics [formal Japanese has three degrees: neutral, humble and elevating, meaning honorific, ed.], and the truth is that the words we use depend on the place we occupy within the social hierarchy and on whom we’re addressing. The language we use says a lot about us and our attitude towards our environment. I’ve noticed numerous times that the elegant and respectful language I learned from my relatives can open many doors. I also have the impression that among wigmakers and, even more generally, in the world of kabuki theatre, the language and way of life are slightly different from those of today’s Japanese. Daily contact with the theatrical reality of the Edo period, that is, the period between the 17th and the 19th centuries, shapes those who work with kabuki theatre in a very unique way.

MO: In your performance ‘HanaUmeda/SadaYakko’ in Komuna/Warszawa, you attempted to summon the ‘remnants of the scenic body’ of Sada Yakko, geisha and dancer, the first populariser of Japanese theatre in the West. Do you feel a spiritual bond with her?

HU: Sada Yakko belonged to the first group of Japanese artists who moved abroad. The institutional layer in classical Japanese dance is slightly different than in European dance schools. We teach dance in ancestral schools, which means that each entrant is accepted into a particular family at some point of her practice. This ritual is called natori, which means ‘assuming a name’. Each dancer who wishes to become a professional is symbolically adopted by her mistress. In this sense, classical Japanese dance functions within the framework of a symbolic family community. Following this line of thinking, Sada Yakko, who came to the United States, to Paris, to Poland is, despite belonging to a different family, like a distant relative to me in a way. Perhaps not spiritually but symbolically.

The sentence you cited, the one about the ‘remnants of the scenic body’, originates from my conviction that the technique of classical Japanese dance deeply transforms the dancer’s body. Dance practice shapes the scenic body anew in all its physicality. It’s important to get rid of your own personal motion habits as much as possible and to accept a certain form practiced the same way for generations. Thereby all practitioners of classical Japanese dance have something in common when it comes to the bodily dimension and the practice of transforming their own bodies at the moment of coming onto the stage.

What I wished to do in Sada/Yakko was to reach towards her physical practice, which she presented on Western stages, a practice originating from her strongly internalised classical dance technique on the one hand and, on the other, from her strong need to come out to meet the expectations and aesthetic habits of Western viewers.

MO: What are your short-term plans in terms of performance?

HU: I’m currently continuing my research on the translation of movement. I’m looking closely at the choreographic structure of jiutamai as a language structure by making it clash with the logic of internet algorithms such as Google Translate. At the end of January, thanks to the courtesy of Joanna Klass and Paweł Soszyński, I had the opportunity to present the beginnings of this work under the tentative title Wachlarz w sypialni (Fan in the Bedroom) in Google Translate’s rendition in the cosy space of Curie City in Warsaw.

Translated from Polish by Anna Potoczny

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