In Tokyo, the first lesson with Kanzaburo was given in his private home in the dance studio. In this lesson, I became challenged by many mishaps of costume and fan. It started when I dropped my sensu (fan) and knelt down to retrieve it. I stepped on the Kimono hem and tore the fabric. With the balance of my body thrown I re-stepped onto the fan fracturing one of he bamboo bones that helped the fan to fold. As I stood to erect myself, the obi about my waist untied itself and slid down to the dance studio floor. In this instant the kimono furled itself open, and there I stood in my white boxer Brooks Brothers underwear. Broken fan, torn kimono, lost obi, and a tremendous moment in the sense of how poorly could I have performed!…and was this a hopeless quest of study?
Kanzaburo sat through all of this with a totally Noh mask face and not a reflected moment of visual comment.
As I apologized and asked of him to be forgiven for such an awkward display he was impassive.
Then he said in Japanese the equivalent of “once more, please” and I went to the side of the studio to rearranged my costume and find another fan to continue “once more” …
And so it went lesson after lesson, until I was actually performing the entire dance and being progressed to more complex repertory.
I always wondered what he must have thought of this blond haired Texan attempting to go where no other non-Japanese had attempted in the dance. But he was forever patient. He saw some gift. He blessed me with his teaching, his great acting interpretation, his brilliant technique, and his time.
When I performed in Japan, he came to see me and the next week the lessons became ever more complex.. He challenged me at every nuance of rhythm and phrasing, eye focus and hand gesture, entrances and exits….his was some of the most detailed and exacting instruction.
Then once I had mastered a new solo, his instruction would be to return to the next lesson and make it my solo with my interpretation and style or personal stamp in performance. He would give me a critique and notes to work upon about how to manipulate the costume and fan technique. I was expected to arrive prepared and well rehearsed for the next lesson.
Usually one cold run was made before he joined me in the studio and then it was a full out performance. No starting over. When and if something was not exactly correct, I was trained to fix it in the moment, make it a part of the performance, and keep going no matter what happened.
Once he intentionally placed the wrong music in the tape machine, and I reshaped the solo as I adjusted in the instant to the new music. When I arrived at the ending and bow, under his breath he whispered …keep in character until you are out of sight of the wings. This lesson repaid itself many times over in the following 50 years of world touring. The most repeated adjustment was to find the lights and perform with them where and when ever they appeared on the stage. The strangest adjustment was to find the wrong hand properties on the stage and to make them work within a solo. A basket of pine cones had been filled with freshly harvested onions. A solo about the pine forests became a homage to the onion fields, and the theatre was perfumed with the pungent smell of raw onions.
Entries – October 20, 2007 and September 15, 2019
