Warabi-za Strays From Its Folk Roots

Based in northeast Japan, the 12-member Warabi-za ensemble displayed impressive versatility and a hearty performance style at the Japan America Theatre on Sunday. Making music on samisen, flute and especially drums, the company also danced everything from adaptations of genuine folk material to dubious choreographic depictions of regional Japanese populations.

“We have a 50-year history of creating works based on traditional music and dance,” read the introduction in the program booklet, and half a century ago, virtually every other pioneering folk company also invented what it needed and couldn’t find.

Today, however, newly created ersatz folklore is highly questionable. Indeed repertory such as “Bamba Mai,” a comic showpiece, danced in sneakers to contemporary music and supposedly “depicting the good humor and vitality of older women,” tarnishes the credibility of a company that cultivates a folkloric identity.

So-called work dances in which a company adds rhythmic gestural accompaniment to traditional folk songs also takes Warabi-za away from folklore into the realm of show-dancing--but at least this kind of piece isn’t as overly cute as the comic repertory.

Better still: the powerful taiko onslaughts, in which drums of several different sizes build a sonic bridge over the sea (“Hachijo-daiko”) or accompany harvest festivals (“Oyama Bayashi” and “Minori-no Uchibayashi”).

Dancers who drummed (or drummers who danced) helped make “Shishi Odori” the most spectacular piece on Sunday’s program. Wearing crimson deer masks with realistic antlers and thatches of hair, the four performers marched down the aisles onto the stage, each of them manipulating a pair of thin, flexible poles strapped to their backs that projected some 5 feet above their heads.

As they drummed in changing line- and circle-formations, they would frequently bend so that the poles struck or brushed the floor.

At the opposite extreme was the intimate, expressive women’s trio “Sofuren,” in which the simplest walking steps and gestures conveyed hopeless grief and loss. But is this truly folk material or the best of the company’s inventions?

Among the uncredited soloists, Shinichi Hirano had the ability to make stillness as eloquent as movement in both “Goshin-no mai,” which incorporated sudden karate lunges, and “Okina Mai,” a masked character dance about old age.

Yuko Maruyama brought refinement to the parasol dance “Tsugaru Aiyabushi” and Chiyo Tsubaki exuded remarkable lightness in the inevitable fan dance, presented as a feminine contrast to the masculine taiko attacks.

Keiko Murata contributed an atmospheric, improvised samisen solo and the artful lighting by Narumi Maruyama often created a perfect match between the dancers’ costumes and the color-washes on the backdrop.