Michio Ito

Michio Ito (born April 13, 1892?, Tokyo, Japan—died November 6, 1961, Tokyo) was a Japanese choreographer, dancer, and scenic director for theatre and film who established himself as a pioneer of modern dance in Europe, New York City, and Los Angeles during the 1920s and ’30s. His distinct brand of choreography relied heavily on arm and upper-torso movement.

The Ito family was well-educated and cultured, with strong ties to the arts. Ito’s father was a successful architect in Tokyo who had studied architecture in the United States. Michio’s studies began with music and Kabuki. He took piano lessons as a child, and after high school he began studying at the Tokyo Academy of Music to train for a singing career in the opera. In about 1911 or 1912 he left Japan for Europe to continue his musical training. After seeing performances in Paris and Berlin by modern dancers Vaslav Nijinsky and Isadora Duncan, he was persuaded to change his focus. Leaving his professional music aspirations behind, in 1912 Ito enrolled in the eurythmics program at the newly established Dalcroze Institute in Hellerau (near Dresden). Developed by Émile Jaques-Dalcroze, eurythmics was the art of making rhythm visible through movement, culminating in an integration of drama, music, and dance. At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Ito left Germany for London.

Virtually penniless in London, Ito laid the groundwork for his career by performing at salons in the homes of the cultured elite. He made important connections with notable figures such as Fujita Tsuguji, Augustus John, George Bernard Shaw, Ezra Pound, and William Butler Yeats. In 1916 Ito performed in Yeats’s first Noh-inspired play, At the Hawk’s Well. That year Ito moved to New York City, where he taught dance, choreographed new works, and performed in large and small productions. He choreographed short dances that he called “dance poems.” His students in New York City included Ruth St. Denis, Pauline Koner, and Angna Enters. He married his student Hazel Wright, with whom he later had two sons. Ito’s goal as a teacher was to incorporate movement of both the Eastern and Western traditions in his dances.

Ito moved to Los Angeles in 1929 just prior to the stock market crash. He began teaching shortly after arriving there. Ito and his master class, which included a young Lester Horton, performed regular small productions to choice audiences of artists, writers, and intellectuals. In September 1929 Ito directed a major production at the Pasadena Rose Bowl. The performance—dances set to the music of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, Antonín Dvořák, and Edvard Grieg—included a full orchestra and chorus and 200 dancers. Ito also performed a solo to Léo Delibes’s ballet Sylvia in which he appeared before a screen under dramatic lighting that produced his shadow on a massive scale. He put on a smaller production at the Hollywood Bowl the following year at which 125 dancers performed to Aleksandr Borodin’s Prince Igor. He produced another symphonic dance performance at the Redlands Bowl in 1936 and another at the Hollywood Bowl in 1937.

After the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941, Ito was arrested as an enemy alien, held in an internment camp in the U.S., and then deported back to Japan, where he lived for the rest of his life. In a strange twist of fate, the U.S. government then hired him to direct performances for American soldiers at the Ernie Pyle Theater (named temporarily during the occupation after the war correspondent killed in Okinawa) in Tokyo. Ito also opened a studio in Tokyo and taught dance. Ito’s life story and professional accomplishments have become more widely recognized in the 21st century through revivals of his choreographed works.