KEI TAKEI

Kei's father had taught his daughter (the second of three children) drawing. Her mother, more practically instructed her in the secrets of growing garden vegetables. Conventionally enough, young Kei enrolled in the Sakaki Bara Dance School where she was drilled in folk dances, ballet, and the subtleties of buyo or Japanese classical dance. Japan's dance world after the tragedies of the war had begun a merciless search of self-expression and, eventually, self-discovery. Led by pioneers and now immortal names Tatsumi Hijakata and Kenji Hinoki, the artistic equivalents of Mary Wigman and Martha Graham, a new kind of experimental dance emerged from Japan, at once indebted to and scornful of the past, buto. Kei soon wearied of these new codifications with their chalk white painted bodies, the trancelike slow motion movements, and their darkness of gloom esthetic. The shackles of the past, Kabuki and Noh it seemed had been replaced by another set of artistic chains. Kei wanted dance to be a..

Primary location: New York United States