Pioneer has shared Japanese classical dance with the world for 50 years

 

Cultural News, May 2008

 

 

Wakana Hanayagi

 

   It has been over 50 years since Wakana Hanayagi began her efforts to introduce the art of Japanese classical dance to the world. Now living in Los Angeles, veteran dancer Wakana continues to reach out to the community and the world through this performing art.

 

    Wakana began to travel around the world when she was invited to be a member of the first Japanese classical dance troupe allowed to go abroad after World War II.

 

    She was only 20-years old when, in 1953, the Japanese Imperial Prince Takamatsu sponsored the Azuma Kabuki Dancers and Musicians in a tour that took them to New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco. Their second tour in 1955-56 took them to 13 countries in Europe.

 

    It was just one month after she married New York-born entertainer Jerry Ito in Tokyo that Wakana traveled to Los Angeles to dance at NBC’s Japan Spectacular Show in January 1959. She was still only 26-years old. 

 

     In 1978, Wakana was invited by the University of Toronto to participate in the memorial event of Irish poet and dramatist William Butler Yeats. She was a choreographer and a performer of Yeats’ At the Hawk’s Well. 

 

    There was a connection between Wakana and Yeats because Wakana’s father-in-law, renowned dancer and pioneer of modern dance, Michio Ito, performed At the Hawk’s Well in London in 1916. Yeats wrote At the Hawk’s Well as a version of a Japanese Noh play without benefit of ever having watched the Japanese performing art.

 

    Wakana was born to a wealthy family in Tokyo and was lucky enough to start her dance training at the age of eight under the tutelage of the then Grand Master of the Hanayagi-school, Jusuke Hanayagi II. She grew up with talented siblings including the famous novelist, Hitomi Yamaguchi.

 

   Wakana established herself both as a first-class performer of Japanese classical dance and also as a disciplined instructor for professional actor training in Tokyo.

 

   But in 1997 when her husband, Jerry Ito, suffered a stroke and needed speech therapy in his native English language, they moved to Los Angeles where their two children were already living.

 

    Since arriving in Los Angeles 10 years ago, Wakana has cultivated new talent particularly within the City of Los Angeles Regional Arts Grant program. 

 

    This year-long series of classes is funded through the City of Los Angeles and provides an opportunity for men and women of all ages and all ethnic backgrounds to begin the study of Japanese classical dance with fundamental movements, and eventually graduating on to simple dances.

 

   Wakana has also received a similar grant from the Alliance for California Traditional Arts whose year-long program allowed her the opportunity to mentor and teach one of her students through the Master Artist-Apprentice program in an intensive course of study.  She has also dedicated much time  volunteering through the Arts in Education program, and at Japan Cultural Night at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of California, Irvine. 

 

    Through these programs and the private classes she offers at the Wakana Hanayagi Conservatory of Japanese Classical Dance, Wakana continues always to strive to achieve and maintain the highest levels of artistic excellence, raising the bar for an even greater promise for cultural exchange well into the new millennium.

 

   The public is invited to attend a graduation program showcasing the students of her Department of Cultural Arts program on Saturday, June 28, beginning at 1:30 p.m. at the Maryknoll Catholic Center in Little Tokyo.  For more information, call (310) 842-3779.