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"Everyone has his own feeling and his own expression; dance as you feel and as you want- that is a better dance for you than any other kind.

 

I will not teach you as others do. I will stand by your side as assistant and advisor and help you to make your own dance.

 

I sincerely hope that many dancers of this kind will come into the world and that is why I have started my school."

 

                                                                                       Michio Itow

                                                                                       1919

 

 

 

                                                                                                                                                     

          Drawing by Kisaku Ito

ART AND THE ARTIST

 

"Art, I believe, is a symbol of love, and the embodiment of this symbol is the artist.

 

In other words, inasmuch as art is a symbol of love, it is universal, giving a spiritual interpretation to the visible and material significance to the invisible, and that one is an artist who makes these two relations manifest.

I feel that one cannot be an artist in the true sense of the word if he walks in one of these paths to the neglect of the other, for the world will not accept him as an artist unless he has a perfect understanding of both, with the skill to project them in significant form. "      

 

              Michio Itow

                     1919 

                                                                                                                                                              

 

Michio Ito,

 

The Dancer and His Dances

 

“The dancer Michio Ito, whose talents were admired by Debussy and Rodin in Paris, by Yeats and Shaw in England, and by thousands in the United States, was born in Tokyo on April 13, 1893.  On November 6, 1961 he died in his native city, where he had resided since 1943.”
                                                                                Helen Caldwell

 

 

     
                                                      
                                                                       

 

 

 

 

©1977 by the Regents of the   

University of California  

Photo by Toyo Miyatake

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