In this article, I illustrate the relationship between dance and music based on ‘dance ethnography’, a newly developed method in dance studies including dance anthropology. Through it, I try to open a new arena on exploring the relationship between dance and music. Defining dancing as separated from music and keeping similar condition in academic division between dance and music in my mind, I examine how nonprofessionals ballroom dance participants and musicians feel in Japanese ballroom dance industry.
From dance lovers’ perspectives, standardized music wouldn’t be more than one option of the music to dance. But most of dance lovers in Japan tend to see standardized music as a canon. The practice of a few dance lovers in this article can be considered as a challenge to authorized dance practice, namely standardized ballroom dance.
Ballroom dancing is practiced by a pair of individuals with different bodies. They cannot dance on one’s personal plan alone and thus have to pay close attention to each other. But standardization of ballroom dancing, especially in Japan, ‘emancipated’ dancers from troubles such that occurre when one can’t predict next move along one’s partner or when one tries to inform partner of what to step next. Even among nonprofessionals, the majority of ballroom dance his/her players must learn from their teachers about the ‘correct’ ways of dancing. Also, the music played in the background while dancing has been reduced into an instrument for counting steps. That has made it difficult for ordinary people, particularly those in old age, to enjoy dancing without taking formal lessons.

View full abstract

In order to clarify the actual situation of ballet education in Japan, we carried out nationwide exhaustive surveys of ballet schools twice in 2011 and 2016. We sent questionnaires to 4,630 ballet schools in 2011 and 4,793 in 2016 and collected 1,484 and 1,557 valid answers respectively. By comparing the results of the two surveys the following was revealed about changes in the ballet education in Japan in the past five years. First, in terms of ballet teachers’ competence, the rate of ballet schools with a teacher who belongs to a professional ballet company decreased from 28% in 2011 to 23% in 2016, but the rate of ballet schools with a qualified teacher didn’t change statistically, from 15% to 16%. As a result of content analysis of free answers of the questionnaires, we found that wide discussions about an appropriate qualification system of ballet instruction among the stakeholders were required in Japan. Second, in terms of teaching content, the implementation rate with regard to open classes and courses for pointe work, variation, and adagio statistically increased. The rate of ballet schools with a student who had participated in a ballet competition also increased statistically, from 51% to 63% in the past five years. These changes can be explained as management effort of ballet schools and from a marked increase of ballet competitions in Japan. As a result of content analysis of the free answers, we found that more investigation of the ballet competitions was important for improvement of Japanese ballet education.

View full abstract

The purpose of this study is to reveal a role that theater theories might play for dancers and performers by discussing Oskar Schlemmer’s theories after the Bauhaus school and making a comparative research of theater theories developed in Bauhaus Stage Workshop. In the 1930s, Xanti Schawinsky, one of the Bauhaus students, an assistant to Schlemmer, taught the performance method by discussion and rehearsal, and represented the essence of Bauhaus Stage with students in Black Mountain Collage, North Carolina. In the 1970s and 1980s, Gerhard Bohner, a dancer and choreographer, focusing on his own body as theater materials, created original works based on Schlemmer’s theories at the Akademie der Künste Berlin. This article will illustrate that the succession of theater theories is not only to help dancers or performers to master performance techniques and concepts but also to be their opportunity of new creation.

View full abstract

In 1904, Michel Fokine attended Isadora Duncan’s Russian debut, and his reform of the art of ballet, which occurred a year later, was realized under the influence of her art. This narration received a very wide currency during the choreographer’s triumphal European tours with Serge Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes in the 1910s, after which Fokine was forced to struggle to detach his reform from her art and dispel his disgrace as Duncan’s “follower” or “imitator.” To defend this discourse, published texts on the choreographer have principally depended on the following two references written in the 1920s: Duncan’s posthumous autobiography My Life, in which she reminisces about a dinner with Diaghilev’s circle after her first appearance in St. Petersburg, and a letter written by Diaghilev wherein he recalls attending Duncan’s Russian debut with Fokine. However, these two sources are dubious with regard to their dates if we weigh them against some contemporary accounts, Fokine’s recollection, or the date of Léon Bakst’s portrait of Duncan. Indeed, according to Vladimir Teliakovsky’s diaries, it was during her Russian sojourn from the end of 1907 to the spring of 1908 that Duncan was closely associated with the Imperial Theatre and their ballet company as she visited the Imperial School and gave a demonstration in the Mariinsky Theatre with her German school students.

View full abstract