A Body of Accents

Dance practice is often hidden inside dance studios, where it is not available for dialogue or interdisciplinary critique. In this paper, I will look closer at one of the accents that my body has held since the year 2000. To Swedish dance academies, it is perhaps the most foreign accent I have in my dance practice. It has not been implemented as ‘professional dance’ in Western dance studios. This foreign accent is called Nihon Buyō, Japanese dance, also known as Kabuki dance. Nihon Buyō, Nō or Kabuki are local performing arts practices for professional performers in Japan. A few foreigners are familiar with these practices thanks to cultural exchange programmes, such as the yearly Traditional Theatre Training at Kyoto Art Centre. There is no religious spell cast over the technique or a contract written that it must be kept secret or that it must not leave the Japanese studio or the Japanese stage. I will compare how dance is being transmitted in the studio in Kyoto with my own vocational dance education of many years ago. Are there similarities to how the female dancer’s body is constructed? Might there be unmarked cultural roots and invisible originators of the movements we are doing today in contemporary dance?