Tokyo: A rewarding ballet season and a short trip to see Kidd Pivot - Vancouver Ballet Society
By Naomi Mori
The National Ballet of Japan’s commission to British choreographer Will Tuckett, a one-act Shakespearean ballet titled The Tragedy of Macbeth, premiered in April at New National Theatre. The score, by the late Scottish composer Geraldine Mucha, Macbeth, had been created as ballet music but had never been used in a ballet performance.
Tuckett focused on the shifting balance of power between Macbeth and Lady Macbeth, with an impressive and complicated pas de deux serving as an introduction to their relationship. Yui Yonezawa gave a chilling and intense portrayal of Lady Macbeth, who dips her hands into the King’s blood with sexual desire and ecstasy, descending into madness in the latter half of the ballet. Yudai Fukuoka was superb as a Macbeth dominated by his wife.
Frederick Ashton’s The Dream, a company premiere, followed. The National Ballet of Japan already has his Cinderella in the repertoire so are familiar with Ashton’s style. Two young dancers, Saho Shibayama and Risako Ikeda, were cast as Titania, and both fulfilled expectations, conquering the fast and fluid Ashton choreography in this contrasting Shakespearean double bill.
The Tokyo Ballet performed the second part of a projected three-part Kaguyahime at the end of April at Tokyo Bunka Kaikan. The hopes are that this contemporary story ballet could be an introduction to an international audience on one of their annual tours to Europe. Based on a well-known Japanese folk tale, it was choreographed by Jo Kanamori, who leads a contemporary troupe called Noism in Niigata. Part one premiered in 2021; the full piece premieres in October.
Dance enthusiasts might have seen Jirí Kylián’s 1988 ballet with the same name, but this one has a different touch. The original story is about Princess Kaguyahime, who was found in a bamboo tree by an old man, who raises her. Having grown up to become a beautiful woman, many men of high class try to marry her. She rejects them, wanting to return to her first home, the moon.
Kanamori changes the plot: in the second act, Kaguyahime is betrothed to the emperor as one of his mistresses, but she is lonely in court. She misses her sweetheart Doji, from the village where she grew up. Another new character is Kagehime (Shadow Princess), who is the emperor’s legal wife, and also lonely, unloved by her husband.
Part one of the ballet had realistic sets, but here the sets and props were abstract. Costumes were modern, with unitards under kimonos, by fashion designer Tamae Hirokawa. Also, the dance style became neo-classical, with Kanamori’s trademark vocabulary showing in the low centre of gravity and off-balance pas de deux.
Kaguyahime was a part of a triple bill that displayed Tokyo Ballet’s versatility. Also featured were John Neumeier’s Spring and Fall and Jerome Robbins’ In the Night.
Tokyo Ballet performed their Giselle in May, a 1944 version by Leonid Lavrovsky based on the classic Coralli/Perrot/Petipa choreography, and a beloved piece in their repertoire. Akira Akiyama, who performed the title role on opening night, is a delicate dancer with strong technique. Her fragility, ethereal lines, and airy leaps embodied an ideal Giselle, and her detailed acting in the mad scene was heartbreaking. Yasuomi Akimoto danced Albrecht with elegance and bravura leaps. The serene corps de ballet of Wilis in Act Two moved without sound in perfect unity. Lavrovsky’s version has a pas de huit (for four couples) danced by the peasants in Act One, and the larger scale of the usual peasant pas de deux or trois adds much liveliness. Tokyo Ballet gives 11 performances of Giselle in Melbourne July 14-22 as a part of the Australian Ballet’s season.
Aiming to create a Japanese-themed original ballet, K-Ballet Company commissioned Madame Butterfly, based on Puccini’s opera, in 2019. Choreographed by the company’s artistic director, Tetsuya Kumakawa, it saw a successful revival in May at Bunakmura Orchard Hall. There is a marvellous dance of the oiran (courtesans), dressed in flamboyant kimonos and taking small steps as if wearing the traditional zouri (Japanese slippers). Saya Narita was a delicate and determined Cio-Cio San, and her despairing solo to the aria Un bel dì vedremo was touching. The sets by Daniel Ostring, based on the Japanese Yukaku (a licensed red-light district), were ornate, as were the kimono-inspired costumes by Ayako Maeda.
It would be interesting to see a Western audience’s reactions to this “Made in Japan” Madame Butterfly. Although there are no plans announced for overseas touring, K-Ballet wants to expand their company to reach a broader audience, including internationally. As part of their strategy, they are changing their name to K-Ballet Tokyo this fall.
In June, the National Ballet of Japan concluded their season with Sir Peter Wright’s Swan Lake, which entered the repertoire in 2021. Artistic director Miyako Yoshida had danced the lead in Wright’s ballet with the Birmingham Royal Ballet, and considers his version the perfect vehicle to enhance dramatic skills—it has a tragically beautiful pas de deux in the final act.
The company should be proud of the corps de ballet of swans for their uniformity, and the way they breathed together with the music, serenely forming complicated patterns. The two prima ballerinas who danced Odette and Odile, Yui Yonezawa and Ayako Ono, showed polished academic technique, dramatic ability, and musicality. Both had earlier performed Lady Macbeth in The Tragedy of Macbeth, and this experience seems to have influenced them, as their characterizations of Odette and Odile were more nuanced than in 2021.
Saho Shibayama, the third Odette/Odile, was promoted as principal due to her success in this role and also as Titania in The Dream. Another young dancer, Shogo Hayami, was also promoted onstage, after his debut as Siegfried. Shibayama is noted for her clean movements and delicacy, while Hayami makes difficult movements look easy with his gravity defying leaps. Although the company has established principal dancers, the lack of the next generation was getting problematic. But now the future is brighter, with two new principals.
Vancouver’s Kidd Pivot, led by Crystal Pite, had its first-ever tour to Japan at the end of May, with Pite and writer Jonathon Young’s Revisor, at the Kanagawa Kenmin Hall In Yokohama, a short train journey away for me in Tokyo. Aside from excerpts from The You Show, it was only the second time her work has been performed here (the first was The Statement, with Nederlands Dans Theater).
In Revisor, the dancers’ lip-sync to text, in English, from Gogol’s The Inspector General, and it was a little difficult for Japanese audiences to follow the story, although Japanese subtitles were provided. But the dancers were so strong and versatile in their almost puppet-like movements, and they shone in the second act when their movements are free of the words. Overall, the audience experienced an overwhelming and powerful expression like many have never seen before.
