Itō Michio

Itō Michio ( Japanese 伊藤 道 郎 ; born April 13, 1893 in Tokyo ; † November 6, 1961 ibid) was a Japanese dancer and choreographer . He was the eldest son of the architect and inventor Itō Tamekichi (1864-1943).

Life

Itō went to Europe in 1912 to become an opera singer . Under the influence of performances by Isadora Duncan , Anna Pawlowa and Nijinsky , he decided to become a ballet dancer and in 1913 went to Émile Jaques-Dalcroze's educational institution for music and rhythm in Hellerau near Dresden. When the First World War broke out, he fled to London . There he received an engagement at the Colliseum Theater in 1915 , where he performed Japanese-European dances as a choreographer. Ezra Pound and William Butler Yeats noticed him and Yeats wrote the dance game At the Hawk's Well for him , which he performed with success in 1916.

In 1916 Itō went to New York , where he worked until 1929. He started with the company of the Denishawn School of Dancing and Related Arts , for which Doris Humphrey , Charles Weidman and Martha Graham performed at the time . In 1917 he became a member of Adolph Bolms Ballet Intime , for which he choreographed performances in the Japanese style. He also worked as a choreographer of commercial revues ( Pinwheel Revel ) and opera performances ( Carmen ). In the 1920s he was a recognized representative of the modern dance movement in the USA.

In 1929 Itō married the dancer Hazel Wright and moved to Los Angeles , where he gave master classes at the Edith Jane School of Dancing . In addition, he continued to work successfully as a choreographer. After the attack on Pearl Harbor , he was imprisoned as an " enemy alien " and charged with espionage. He came back to Japan in 1943 as part of a prisoner exchange. Here, after the war, the American military administration appointed him as ballet director of the Ernie Pyle Theater . He later opened his own studio, continued to work as a choreographer and initiated the first training program for models. In 1960 he was commissioned to choreograph the opening ceremony for the 1964 Summer Olympics in Tokyo. His death in 1961 prevented the implementation of this project.

swell

• Michio Ito Foundation
• Debra Craine, Judith Mackrell: The Oxford Dictionary of Dance . 2nd Edition. Oxford University Press, 2010, ISBN 978-0-19-956344-9 , pp. 234–235 ( limited preview in Google Book search).

Japanese name: As is common in Japan, the family name comes before the first name in this article . Thus Itō is the family name, Michio the first name.