Susan McCormac 11/25/24 Susan McCormac 11/25/24

Sachiyo Ito’s Memoir: Chapter 11

Chieko Genso — Photo by Ray Smith

This year renowned dancer, dance educator, and choreographer Sachiyo Ito has been serializing her memoir on JapanCulture•NYC with monthly installments, each chapter revealing a different aspect of her early life in Tokyo and career in New York City.

Ito offers of a profound exploration of the experience of dedicating herself to traditional Japanese dance at an early age, arriving in New York City during the tumultuous ‘70s, and making a successful career in the arts. Each chapter offers a glimpse into the complexities that shaped her journey. It is a literary examination of not only Ito Sensei’s life, but of how New York City’s culture evolved over the decades and what sacrifices one must make to achieve a thriving career in the arts.

The memoir is an invitation to delve into the layers of a creative life and career that has spanned more than 50 years. As a work in progress, it is also an invitation for you to offer your feedback. Your insights will contribute to the evolution of this extraordinary work.

To read all the chapters, please click here. For more information about Sachiyo Ito, please visit her website, dancejapan.com.

Poetry in Motion for the Time of Contemplation

Please Call Me by My True Names

In my memory, the bright morning sunlight during the walking meditation along the cliff over the Pacific Ocean was sublimely beautiful. In my mind’s eye, I look up at Rev. Hanh’s face as we walk up the hill, the brilliant sun shining behind him. Nowadays, this image returns to me on my morning walks with Joy, my dog. I must say it was the stroke of luck of a lifetime that I was able to meet Thich Nhat Hanh—the Zen monk, poet, and peace activist recommended for a Nobel Peace Prize by Martin Luther King Jr. in 1967—and get to know his teachings.

My first retreat with Thich Nhat Hanh and his sangha was in 1990 at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Although I am not a Buddhist, his teachings and poems have greatly influenced my work. It was he who inspired me to begin choreographing dances to poetry, which I began to do from then on. It was at this retreat that I also met Sister Chan Khong, a longtime associate of Rev. Hanh’s. She was kind enough to set aside time to meet with me so that I could show her the dances I choreographed and gain approval to show them publicly. Happily, this permission was granted.

I presented dances based on Rev. Hanh’s poems for the first time at my concert Dedicated to World Peace in 1991 at the Clark Studio Theater at Lincoln Center.

The main poem I choreographed for the concert was Please Call Me by My True Names, which appeals to the interconnectedness of all beings, both sentient and insentient. I titled my dance, though, An Invitation to Bell. The title may sound strange, but my intention was to ring the bell in a gentle manner, rather than by striking it, and to invite people to listen to the sound of the bell. The bell would signal the start of an interactive walking meditation, a time for us to pause and focus on breathing.

Through audience participation in the walking meditation, I hoped that Thich Nhat Hanh's call for humanism was heard and felt. I titled the concert Dedicated to the World Peace to reflect Hanh’s message calling for compassion, reconciliation, and inner harmony and held it on the weekend celebrating Martin Luther King Jr., who supported Hanh’s work.

Although the theme of the concert was sweeping and grand, one small, very human moment stands out to me. The Clark Studio Theater was small with a capacity of 100, but well equipped with lights and a high ceiling, which made set designer Bob Mitchell’s magical ball descending onto my hand possible in the piece “Moon Child.” For the stage set of Please Call Me by My True Names, I had to bring bamboo sticks, more than eight feet long, that would hold scrims across the stage horizontally and vertically. It was quite a trip to carry them from the shop to the theater. Somehow, I got them into the subway train!

Looking back on it now, I think that world peace was too big a subject for only a minor dancer to advocate for.

Spoken Poetry

Then I had the good fortune to meet Kim Rosen, who performs spoken word poetry, and Jami Sieber, a cellist, and collaborate with them for the 15th Anniversary Concert of Salon Series in 2013. I met them at one of the retreats they were offering, and a few years later I invited them to the concert. Luckily, they were able to combine an East Coast visit with their tour schedule and were able to participate.

I was used to poems, when spoken aloud, being referred to as “recitations.” Kim did not call her work “recited,” but rather “spoken” – “spoken poetry.” She would memorize poems and speak in a very moving manner, powerful enough to send us listeners into tears. With Jami’s cello providing a beautiful accompaniment, Kim’s speaking was deeply touching. Together, they offer workshops for healing around the country.

Thereafter, I presented a series of choreographies to recited or spoken poems.

In 2010 I presented “Poetry in Motion” at Joyce Soho, based on poetry including not only Hanh, but those of others as well: Neruda, Mary Oliver, Rainer Maria Rilke, and Rumi. These dances were accompanied by percussionists Yukio Tsuji and Egil Rostad. Singers Beth Griffith and Elizabeth Knauer recited the poems, including my favorite Chieko-sho, which you may remember from previous chapters. The poem Only Breath by Rumi inspired me for its cross-cultural work where the human spirit gathers as one. Different ethnic dance forms represented cultures across the world, including Indian, Russian, ballet, and contemporary dance. To represent Japan, I chose a karate master, Tokumitsu Shibata, who impressed both artists and the audience as he combined karate with my choreographed movements so well that it was simply amazing. The concert was one of the most exciting collaborations of my career.

Renku and Dance

Inspired by the teaching and poetry of Rev. Hanh, I began a work combining haiku, walking meditation, and dance. Walking meditation requires quieting and focusing the mind, which also helps in both the composition of haiku and the creation of dance. I began presenting this as a workshop at spiritual retreats, such as Dai Bosatsu Zendo.

The most memorable venue where I gave this workshop was the Morikami Museum and Japanese Gardens in Florida, where I had been previously invited to perform Japanese dance at local art galleries as well as Delray College.

“Ito danced to a haiku written by suburban Delray Beach resident Douglas Davy.
’She was very deliberate,’ he said. ‘You could watch a performance, but it’s taking something written and interpreting it . . . It was extraordinary.’”

— Quote- Michelle Mundy, The Palm Beach Post, March 8, 2002 Source

By my third visit to the Museum in 2002, the facility had been beautifully renovated, including the addition of a Japanese garden. My program was titled “Walking Meditation, Poetry, and Dance.” I conducted the walking meditation for participants in the auditorium, then continuing into the outdoors and around the garden; this stroll would serve as the basis for the haiku composed later. Upon returning to the theater in the museum, I improvised dances to the haiku stanzas presented by the audience. The pine trees in the Japanese garden were just as magnificent as those we see in Japan and proved to be very inspiring for the composition of haiku. The breeze through the pines was so lovely that it brought to mind the line, “Rustles of the wind, or whispers of the pines…” from the Noh play Matsukaze (Pine Wind).

In 2003, the program An Evening of Renku and Dance, held at Japan Society in collaboration with the Northwest Conference of Haiku Society of America, was the beginning of my collaboration with Haiku Society of America. Six poets, along with three musicians and I, were on stage, ready to improvise on whatever haiku the poets might compose. We concluded the program with a haiku from a member of the audience. It was a humorous one, written by a lady from India, about a bug in the head! And so, my dance was humorous as well. After the performance, she gave me a beautiful red silk Indian scarf, a gift I cherished for many years. I was happy and perhaps a little relieved as the program ended with a lot of smiles.

The collaboration with Haiku Society of America did not end at the Japan Society concert in 2003, but continued through 2023 in my Salon Series, led by Penny Harter, John Stevenson, and the late William Higginson.

To collaborate with me on linking renku and dances requires the ability to write haiku on the spur of the moment while watching my dance. For this improvisation of dance and stanzas, spontaneity is the essence of the endeavor, rather than contemplation. It requires a genius to write a stanza on the spot, making a quick decision on the choice of words upon observation of the dance. I must bow to all three poets, who so effortlessly showcased this skill. Bill was a prolific writer, instrumental in introducing haiku to the Western world, while his wife, Penny, was more than a haiku poet. Although their penmanship is unbelievably prestigious, they were incredibly kind and generous in supporting my work and collaborating with me on Renku and Dance in my Salon Series. As for John, he has been with me all these years, a partner in words and footsteps. My gratitude to him and my respect to his haiku and scholarship as a writer, thinker, and poet is more than I can express. His haiku is often humorous, yet it has a deep, humane touch. His essay in my Salon program on the theme of resonancewas incredibly insightful:

“There is no meaning to light without darkness, no meaning to darkness without light. Conflict, however, is not the only way of looking at these mutually dependent aspects of reality. A great deal of their interaction is characterized by harmony and resonance.”

One of my favorite haiku by John, chosen from among far too many, is this:

A deep gorge...
Some of the silence
is me
— John Stevenson
Geppo, July/August 1996

John would gather his friends from the Haiku Society of America for my programs and come down from Ithaca, where he lives, by train for the day to join the program. Hence, our Renku and Dance were held several times across the decades of the Salon Series and featured in the Salon Series finale as well. I was so pleased that John could join us for the final program.

Renku and Dance inspired the workshop Dance and Poetry of Japan, held at senior centers in Chelsea and the West Village in New York. Participated in by seniors who love poetry or Japanese arts and culture, the program has been repeated for the past four years. The seniors are great composers of haiku, and they bravely answer the challenge to make Japanese dances based on haiku and renku. Together, we share our life stories, inspired by our poetry composing process and dancing. We converse about our histories, the countries we come from, and through the poetry we create, we find ties that connect us across ethnicity and culture, rather than boundaries that separate us. Together, we come up with new dances to illustrate our poems. Watching the seniors learn new forms of dance is simply amazing. I call them seniors, but their interest and curiosity keep them young at heart, which is a valuable lesson for us all. The ephemeral quality that is shared by poetry and dance, particularly Japanese dance with its subtle evocativeness and suggestiveness, gives us a vast possibility of expression, of ways to tell the stories of our lives. It is something I am thankful to have discovered in my life.

Listening to Sand
pouring sand
from one palm to the other— she listens
foam slips
from a clam shell, sand draining with it
carried out above
the sea, sand drops from a gull's cry
at the sea's edge her feet slap the sand-breaking waves
listening to sand she remembers night wind—
dune grasses yielding
— Penny Harter for Sachiyo Ito, written during her dance to Chieko: The Elements (Chieko: Genso)
Copyright © 2008 Penny Harter

The posting of this chapter to JapanCulture-NYC.com was paid for by Sachiyo Ito and reprinted here with her permission. Susan Miyagi McCormac of JapanCultureNYC, LLC edited this chapter for grammatical purposes only and did not write or fact-check any information. For more information about Sachiyo Ito and Company, please visit dancejapan.com. ©Sachiyo Ito. All rights reserved.

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Susan McCormac 10/11/24 Susan McCormac 10/11/24

SACHIYO ITO’S MEMOIR: CHAPTER 10

To read all the chapters, please click here. For more information about Sachiyo Ito, please visit her website, dancejapan.com.

The Cranes

“Yume (Dream), the closing piece for this program, is a remarkable signature piece for Ms. Ito’s dancing and acting. It is a poem in movement and truly shows the wide range of Ms. Ito’s knowledge and abilities.”

— Mme. Peff Modelski - Attitude, Winter 1997/98

In Chapters 6 and 7, I explored the theme of transformation through dance. In Chapter 7, I discussed a transformation from a beautiful being into an ugly one: the lovely maiden turning into a hideous snake in the Dojoji story. But what about transformations going the other way, from the mundane to the ephemeral – like in a dream, where you trade your arms for wings and fly?

Birds hold a universal fascination for mankind. They are depicted in poetry, painting, and song across cultures. We watch them in their migrations, knowing as they fly overhead that the season is about to change. In the West, the official bird of October is the swan. In Japan, the birds that represent elegance and quintessential beauty are also waterfowl: the tsuru (crane) and sagi (heron). They are highly valued for their purity of color and the graceful sweep of their wings in flight. Another bird that is prevalent in Japanese art is the white-fronted goose, often depicted flying through the skies of autumnal paintings.

In the Kabuki dance Azuma Hakkei (The Eight Beauties in the East), geese become messengers of love when a character in the dance entrusts them with his love letter. What an enchanting idea it is! In another Kabuki dance, Fuji Musume (Wisteria Maiden), geese play an important role. At the end of the dance, the lyrics of the music describe the flight of the geese in the twilight sky:

空も霞の夕照りに
名残惜しむ帰る雁がね　
The sky is hazy and the evening light is glowing,
the geese return home reluctantly.

We are left with a lovely and memorable image, an appropriate farewell to the end of the dance. The words “returning geese” make me wonder where they are going as I raise a hand to view them. Is this gesture a metaphor for two lovers returning to their home?

Hiroshige ukiyo-e painting in Omi Hakkei

As I child, I used to dream of flying. I was not transformed into a winged bird, but into Ten’nyo, the angelic figure depicted on the ceiling of Todai-ji Temple in Nara. There are many ways to analyze the psychology of flying dreams, but the only premise that resonates with me is that of freedom.

When I was young, I did not carry the pressures and worries that I do as an adult. My subconscious, unencumbered by responsibilities, must have taken flight very easily. Since then, I have loved “the flying in dancing,” whether classical, Kabuki dances, or my own works.

I choreographed flight in Chieko: The Element, the dance I created based on the work Chieko-sho (Collection of Poems for Chieko) by Kotaro Takamura. In one of the poems in the collection, “Lemon Elegy,” there is a line: “Chieko flies!” I had my singers sing this in a high-pitched voice, almost like an exclamation. In Chieko’s case, flying was a metaphor for leaping into a realm of insanity. I envisioned my own movements as that of a white bird, flying into the black space beyond the stage, the darkness of the theater becoming a spiritual world separated from reality. I believe that Kotaro wanted to express that Chieko found release from the worries and responsibilities she carried as a woman, wife, and artist in her flight. In doing so, he placed her on an eternal pedestal; in another poem, he expressed, “Chie-san, you are young forever.”

Other expressions of emancipation can be found in dances and plays in the genre of Kyoran-mono (the insanity pieces) in Kabuki plays, in which the protagonist loses his mind. My favorite is Onatsu Kyoran (Onatsu the Insane), the famous work created by Tsubouchi Shoyo in 1914. I performed it at Pace University Theater in 2004. This performance was a dream come true for me. Not only was I able to invite Shogo Fujima, a renowned dancer, to come to New York from Japan as a guest artist, but I was able to rent the exact same costumes from the original production from the Shochiku Kabuki Costume Shop.

While the portrayal of an insane character may suggest frenzy and ugliness in Western theater, in Japanese classical theater, an otherworldly, ephemeral beauty is a hallmark of insanity. I often think that we dancers are very fortunate to be able to transform ourselves into such characters.

*Sagi Musume* (*The Heron Maiden*) at Mitsukoshi Theater, Tokyo

The first Kabuki dance I performed that was inspired by birds was Sagi Musume (The Heron Maiden) at Mitsukoshi Theater in Tokyo in 1968. Beloved from its first presentation in 1761, Sagi Musume has been recreated many times. The mystery of whether the heroine is a woman or a heron unfolds as she moves from joy to despair, before suffering her final fate in Hell. The white color of the heron suggests the innocence of a young lady before she experiences the turbulent emotions of a love affair, while the snow functions as a metaphor for both purity and the fleetingness of love as it melts away. The weight of the heroine’s thoughts is reflected in the heaviness of the snowfall, amplifying the drama of the Hell scene at the end, as the snow falls on the suffering heron. Since then, I have performed this piece numerous times in the U.S., and the long white sleeves and trailing hem of the costume have turned gray from brushing the floors of so many stages.

Performing *Sagi Musume* for Japan Society. Photo by Thomas Haar

My first original work with birds as a theme was Crane, which I presented at the 25th anniversary concert celebrating my American debut. This dance was inspired by one of my greatest supporter’s love for the red-crowned crane, one of Japan’s most beloved animals. I met Mary Griggs Burke at the celebration of her 75th birthday in 1991, which also commemorated her acquisition of a painting of a scene from Ibaraki, a well-known dance drama in Noh and Kabuki.

With Mrs. Burke at the post-performance reception of the 25th anniversary concert in 1997

The theme of the painting was a transformation of an old woman to a demon, so I created an infernal dance, accompanied by two dancers from my company. I had fractured my foot a few days before the performance, but knowing that the show must go on, I danced regardless and did not let anyone know of my injury until after the evening was over. You can imagine Mrs. Burke’s surprise when she found out after the party.

Over the following years, Mrs. Burke’s support for my work was very important. After the 25th anniversary concert, held at Florence Gould Hall in 1997, she held a very special reception and tea ceremony at her residence for my guests.

Mrs. Burke was also a supporter of both the International Crane Foundation in the U.S. and the Japanese Crane Foundation. With her love of these beautiful birds combined with her love of Japanese art, she amassed a fabulous collection of screens depicting cranes from the Edo era, created by artists in the Rinpa school of painting.

When the International Crane Foundation in Wisconsin held a celebration for her 80th birthday in 1996, I was invited. I was thrilled to create another crane dance, this time based on the folktale Yuzuru (Twilight Crane). It was a magical evening. I had a special crane costume made with one white, sheer sleeve designed in the shape of a wing. In the story, the heroine first appears as a woman, although her true form is a crane. In the end, she returns to her avian form. I wanted to represent the character’s half-humanness to the audience with the sleeves’ one wing – to capture the essence of being caught between two worlds. The entire outdoor stage was dark but for a single bright streak of light. I felt as if I were entering a void in the darkness of that space, about to step into an infinite universe at the end of the dance.

Two decades later, in the installment of the Salon Series that introduced Japanese folk tales, I choreographed another Twilight Crane, accompanied by a flute and an ancient koto. Inspired by a Chinese Opera costume, I had the special sleeves designed as wings for my costume. I also invited a weaver to the program. After giving a demonstration of weaving on her loom, the same type used by the crane in the story, she became a part of the performance by being cast as a shadow. In the original tale, the crane, living as a human, secretly pulls out her feathers to make a beautiful fabric that her husband can sell in the market. I was very fortunate to be able to borrow the weaver’s piece of fabric to use as that woven by the crane. At the end of the piece, the wing-sleeves became large as I spread them, affecting a farewell gesture as the heroine departs the earth, abandoning her life as a human to return to her true form as a crane.

In 2008, I created a dance of cranes for a trio set to a modern koto composition by Sawai Tadao, Tori no Yohni (Just Like Birds), for dance students at Stephens College, where I was a visiting professor. These pieces were choreographed in a contemporary rather than a classical style. I was extremely happy with the result as the students, all trained ballet and modern dancers, performed so beautifully. It was also a lot of fun to go to local stores and choose fabric for costumes with the director of the costume department. I was very lucky to be invited to teach at a college that has such well-established and longstanding theater and dance departments. They make every effort to create the best college production possible and present them with great pride.

One of my most poignant performances came in October 2020. Salon Series No. 67: Prayer for Healing and Peace once more featured cranes as the central theme. In Japan, cranes are the symbol of longevity, healing, and happiness. Over the course of that spring and summer, we had watched the world come to a halt, overcome by disease. In spite of the pandemic, I decided to present the program. Of course, the circumstances of the lockdown necessitated that the performance had to be livestreamed, a first for my company.

As a prayer for the victims of COVID, I offered the dances Dedication, and Seiten no Tsuru (Cranes in the Blue Sky), performed by two of my dancers and me. The program also featured an origami demonstration by Colin McNally, whom I met during my Free Children’s Workshop program. Among the schools where I gave workshops in 2019 was the Beginning with Children Charter School in Brooklyn, where I taught Mr. McNally’s students. In 2020, hearing that he and his class had completed the senbazuru project, or one thousand folded paper cranes, I invited him to participate in the Salon Series program. Folding one thousand paper cranes has come to invoke well wishes of healing and recovery for those who are ill.

Mr. McNally was happy to talk about his senbazuru project for cancer survivors, and he showed us how to fold a paper crane. I also discussed twelve-year-old Sadako Sasaki, who famously set out to fold one thousand cranes after being diagnosed with leukemia as a result of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Her memorial at Hiroshima Peace Park is now covered with paper cranes from around the world. The program ended with my friend and guest artist Beth Griffith, a wonderful singer and actor, singing “Amazing Grace” as a light to guide our healing in the darkness of the pandemic.

Like the birds, we perform migrations of our own over the course of our lives – evolving from carefree dreamers to responsible adults who light the way for those who come after us. My journey began as my dream, then dancing as a crane, then evolving to a Salon Series, Prayers and Healing though Symbolism of Cranes. Was it a long flight, you might ask? Actually, it was a quick trip for seventy years – almost like being in a dream.

Sachiyo Ito’s Memoir: Chapter 11

Poetry in Motion for the Time of Contemplation

SACHIYO ITO’S MEMOIR: CHAPTER 10

The Cranes

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