Okinawan Grace: Working Hard to Sidestep Assimilation : Dance: The driving goal of the Majikina Honryu troupe is to preserve Okinawan tradition from melting into the vast, modern culture of Japan.

The Los Angeles Festival lists the Majikina Honryu Dance Company under the theme of “Tending the Flame.” The basic question is: Whose flame--Okinawa’s or Japan’s?

The answer is complex because it’s really a blend.

“The Japanese used to consider Okinawans second-class citizens--peasants, mongrels,” said company manager Heather Matsunaga, “because we were not pure Japanese.” That attitude continued, along with Japanese rule, until just after World War II, she said.

For centuries, Okinawa was known as Luchu, a trade crossroads. The largest island in the Ryukyu chain, it paid tribute to China and Japan until 1892, when Japan took control and changed the name to Okinawa.

The Americans, who currently maintain a military base there, returned the island to Japan in 1972.

“The Japanese now consider the Okinawan Prefecture a part of Japan. We are being assimilated,” Matsunaga said. “Our official language is Japanese, and we are intermarrying. But, we are still trying to retain the Okinawan culture and the uniqueness of the Okinawan people as well.”

That includes Okinawan dance, the lifelong specialty of Okinawan-born Aiko Tengan Majikina. A student of the late grandmaster Iemoto Yuko Majikina, whom Japan declared a national living treasure in 1972 for refining and perpetuating Okinawan dance, Tengan Majikina began a branch of the Majikina dance school 13 years ago in Whittier. The company started four years later.

“I try to stick to tradition,” Tengan Majikina said. Although she acknowledges the debt that Okinawan classical dance structure owes to Chinese and Japanese theater, she maintains that the recent, heavy influx of Japanese culture will impose itself on the essentially Okinawan art.

The two arms of that medium are folk and classical dance. Folk preceded classical (court dance) by centuries. Originating in religious beliefs, depictions of life and the celebrations of a primarily agrarian society, it was danced to un-Japaneselike rhythmic drums and lively, melodic music-- he-bushi-- by men and women, as it is today.

“Unlike court dance, there’s not much written of folk dancing history,” said Tengan Majikina, who counts China, Indonesia, the South Sea Islands and Southeast Asia as tangential influences on the folk art.

The classical idiom began in the ancient Okinawan capital of Shuri when Chukun Tamagusuku was appointed minister of dance in 1715.

“He was instructed to prepare plays dealing with the history and legends of Okinawa for the entertainment of Chinese envoys at a coronation,” Matsunaga said. “He created the combination dance, or Kumi-Udui, of which there are five.”

As it is in Chinese and Noh theater, the style includes three parts, according to Tengan Majikina: an entrance, a middle and an exit. It deals with themes of revenge, militance, expulsion of sin and the transitory nature of life. Accompanied by solemn yet majestic music-- ufi-bushi-- it was first performed “like Kabuki, only by men from the upper classes,” she said. “Slowly it became more acceptable for women to entertain and perform the classic women’s roles.”

Tengan Majikina’s own 20-member company reverses the ancient dictum as the dancers, all female, switch genders in the seven classical and folk dances for their Los Angeles State and County Arboretum show, where they open for Uwanuda Kagura Troupe on Thursday.

The costumes her company uses are representative of all Okinawan dance companies. Made of silk, cotton and banana fiber, they indicate the rank of the character wearing them by color and symbol. Unlike the Japanese kimono, Okinawan robes accommodate the more tropical climate and therefore are wider and looser. They do not overlap and often do not require an obi.

Likewise, the stately, emotion-driven classical vocabulary and the vibrant, physical motion of folk also have little to do with Japanese dance. “The Japanese keep their toes on the ground and the toe overlaps,” Tengan Majikina said. “Our movement centers in the stomach. We carry our body weight on our feet, and we glide with an arching foot.”

She attributes this to the inclusion of karate in Okinawan dance. Why karate?

“When the Japanese rule began (in the 1800s), they forbade any practice of martial arts and confiscated all weapons,” Majikina said with a laugh. “So (our ancestors) practiced karate while dancing.”