Digital Media Studies Perspectives on Japan Performing Arts on Instagram @performance.jpa

The use of digital media to promote local culture has become a new breakthrough in exposing local culture to international countries. In addition to being able to be immediately recognized in other nations, digital media promotion is also less expensive and quicker to implement. This study aims to determine the perspective of Digital Media Studies in Japan Performing Arts. The method used in this research is Krippendorff content analysis on Instagram @performance.jpa by using Japanese dance indicators which include Kabuki, Kasa Odori, Bon Odori, Noh Mai, Onikenbai, Nanazumai, Wadaiko, Arauma, Nihon Buyo. The conclusion of this study shows that Japan Performing Arts introduces Japanese culture through the collaboration of western culture by promoting the Nihon Buyo dance.

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?

To Call Dance Japanese

Nihon buyô, sometimes known as kabuki dance, has captured the imagination of Japanese and international audiences for centuries. The dance combines three traditional categories of Japanese dance movement, mai or lateral movement, odori or vertical, jumping movement, and furi, mimetic or imitational movement. Due to its popularity and its long association with kabuki theatre, Nihon buyô is understood by many to represent a singular, uniquely Japanese form of dance. Yet, the term itself is a turn-of-the-century neologism, invented in reaction to the Western category of dance. This retroactive nomination secured Nihon buyô’s status as a national dance, representative of Japanese aesthetics, culture, and behaviors.

Evaluating Methods of Traditional Dances: Case Study in Nihon Buyo

This paper proposes two evaluating methods of traditional dances to put traditional dances in school education, taking Nihon Buyo as an example. One is a skill evaluation method using motion capture equipment. Digitized data of movements could provide scientific pedagogy and appraisal in school education. The other is an impression evaluation method using Semantic Differential (SD) method. Impressions that spectators get from Nihon Buyo can be statistically and objectively evaluated. Though traditional dances have various styles, techniques, and representations, these two methods could be applied differently to understand them scientifically and put them in school education in perspective on a global basis.