FLL Lecture – Rewriting the Modernist Encounter: ‘At the Hawk’s Well’ and the Dance Poem Movement in Japan

In 1916, the modern dancer Itō Michio (伊藤道郎) collaborated with W.B. Yeats and Ezra Pound on the noh-inspired dance-drama “At the Hawk’s Well.” Scholarship on the production tends to portray Itō as a figure of inspiration to the poets, an almost accidental muse whose Japanese-ness authenticated their interest in nō drama. However, attending to the contemporaneous activities of Itō’s Japanese peers reveals his own artistic purposes in the project. Yet close examination of the relationship reveals that rather than being simply an accessory to British modernism, Itō was engaged in the nationalist project of developing Japanese modern dance, even as he lived and worked abroad. Itō’s dual effort thus not only reveals Yeats’ and Pound’s Japonisme and the Dance-Poem movement to be modernist inter-texts, but also suggests a new way of conceiving of the circulation of modernist techniques and ideas.

Tara Rodman is a candidate in the Interdisciplinary PhD in theater and drama at Northwestern University. Her dissertation focuses on the Japanese dancer Itō Michio as a figure of transnational modernism. The recipient of fellowships from the Fulbright and Nippon foundation, her research has appeared in Theatre Journal and Theatre Research International.

Sponsored by the Department of Foreign Languages and Literature and co-sponsored by the Language Resource Center, the event will take place in Greene Hall 148.

For more information, visit the Japanese program’s website.