Michio Ito

Michio Ito was born in Tokyo in 1883 in a time when Japan was interested in Western things. Through his life, Ito expressed his spirituality in art rather than identifying with a single religion. Contrary to his family’s prior expectations, Ito sailed for Europe at 18 to train in Oprah. The Oprah singers disillusioned him, causing him to stray from his intentions of study Oprah. He was mesmerized by Isadora Duncan’s dancing, turning his thoughts towards dance. He studied eurhythmics, a style of dance focused on making music visual in movement. Ito fled to London because of WWI where he did impromptu dances at prominent gatherings. He became rather popular and did many performances but once again moved on because of war, this time to the United States.

There was no Modern dance movement in New York when he got there. Ito pieced together a career of choreographing, directing, and composing Japanese style dances because of the popularity of oriental things. Ito danced with Adolph Bolm’s Ballet Intime, a relatively small group of international performers that toured featuring non-western dances. He presented more authentic productions of Japanese plays, some adapted by himself, for small theaters. At that time, he also was producing large-scale productions because he realized the necessary of working with large-scale commercial theater to stay afloat. He desired to bring together the East and West in his own for and style of dance. This presented the idea of having an individual influence as he tried to break stereotypes. Many of his employments were linked to the stereotypes that he was trying to break simply for the sake of having a job. His concerts were well reviewed and he was singled out as a charismatic performer. Ito saw himself as a music interpreter and said that he and the music come as one. He sometimes changed the music to fit his choreography, which was a tied to his exposure to western dance since he saw Japanese dance as more structured where as Western dance relied more on the music. Ito often called his works "dance poems," suggesting a theme or mood expressed obliquely and succinctly.

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Ito married one of his dancers, Hazel Wright, in 1929 and eventually had 2 sons with her. Early that year Ito set out on a cross-country tour with his company, including Hazel. After that, Ito began teaching at the Edith Jane School of Dancing. In September 1929, he choreographed for 200 dancers in the Pasadena Rose Bowl, accompanied by live orchestra and chorus. During the next 12 years, he choreographed several highly successful large-scale symphonic dances performed. In 1931 he took his wife and two sons and his company to Japan, his first trip home in close to 20 years, and was very well received. In 1934 he took a small company to Mexico for a successful tour. Ito lived in California and worked in various capacities in six films but continued to survive largely by teaching and concert tours. He was divorced and remarried and became increasingly concerned about the growing racism on the West Coast and the political tensions between the US and Japan. The growing racism on the west coast caused him much tension living in California. He had a hard time with this because he wanted the land of his birth, Japan, and the land of his education, the United States, to get along. Ito made several trips to Japan that included informal peace-making efforts. His connections, his travels, and some other projects intended to foster peace brought him under surveillance by the FBI. Within 24 hours after Pearl Harbor he was arrested as an alien enemy and unjustly accused of espionage. Ito and his second wife Tsuyako were repatriated to Japan in 1943 as part of a prisoner exchange. Shortly after, he was hired by the American Occupation administration as dance director of the Ernie Pyle theatre, a clear acknowledgement that he had never been an enemy agent. Ito spent the rest of his life in Japan, opening a studio there, presenting dance concerts, working as a theatrical director, and establishing the first training program for fashion models. In 1960 he was commissioned to choreograph the opening and closing ceremonies for the Tokyo Olympics of 1964. He had many utopian ideas for the closing ceremony but they sadly never came to fruition because Ito died suddenly in November 1961.