DANCE REVIEW : Kanya Sanjo V Program at Japan America Theatre

Among her achievements in nearly a half century of service to the local Japanese-American community, the late dancer/choreographer Kanya Sanjo V created a dance form called kayo-buyo .

Based on Japanese classical dance (her specialty), it relaxed some of the rules to accommodate highly un -classical accompaniments: Japanese pop ballads sung to a mixture of Western and Asian instruments.

Watching the faculty and students of Kanya Sanjo V’s school dance 15 of her kayo-buyo solos, Sunday at the Japan America Theatre, you saw a fusion of past and present. Steering a course between vulgarity and affectation, the best kayo-buyo re-created archetypal Japanese dance images for a new generation, finding a contemporary pulse and flow for fan- and sleeve- and pole-dances of great vivacity.

Wearing a magnificent white-on-white kimono with a silver obi, Kan-oh Sanjo brought to the parasol dance, “Sasame Yuki,” a subtle play of facial expressions, delicate gestures of weeping and the ability to skim the floor with silken gliding steps.

Shimmering manipulations of a fan and her elegant floral kimono in muted tones of plum and peach made Kangiku Sanjo’s “Setsu Gekka” equally memorable.

This all-woman company also proved adept at male-impersonation, with Kanfugi Sanjo looking like a living woodblock print in the forceful “Jinsei Sugoroku Otoko No Tabiji,” a solo full of dynamic stamping and martial poses with a sword.

The antique black-and-white striped cape and robe, mushroom-shaped hat and powder-blue pants also generated its own drama, bold as the contemporary, up-tempo music.

Some of the students danced kayo-buyo doggedly, as if taking a compulsory test. Some of the costumes recycled nightclub kitsch--especially the silver lame kimonos with hot-pink obis in the group finale. There were even moments when the emphasis on gesture in Japanese dance and the soft-rock rhythms of the songs combined to suggest that Kanya Sanjo V had invented the Vogue.

However, kayo-buyo seemed most often a context for accessibility and this company a devoted instrument of a woman with a very astute sense of her mission and her time.