Hiroshi Miyamoto
Like the force of the moon on the oceans’ tides, dance has pushed and pulled Hiroshi Miyamoto from its grasp many times. He has relished in the waves of musical arts, modern contemporary dance and classical bharatanatyam, withdrawn from it all, and then returned in full force.
His creative mind bloomed when he was a young boy in Japan and started practicing piano. As he grew older, and more advanced in his practice, he considered pursuing music in university, but his parents were concerned with the likelihood of success. “My dad and mom knew that only a few artists, only a few musicians, could support themselves, so they pushed me to go to a regular university,” he says. “But my passion was always in my heart, and so after I graduated, I asked my parents to just let me do whatever I need to do, and I went to Canada to start my dream.”
With a degree in law, and virtually no background in dance, Hiroshi ditched his pre-marked path and ventured to Vancouver, Canada in 1994 to fulfill his deepest passion- to perform. He signed up for classical ballet classes before transitioning into modern contemporary. After just a year of practice, he auditioned for the Main Dance Society, where he learned for two years before heading south to practice at the Merce Cunningham Studio in New York City.
Dance, for Hiroshi, was instinctive. Having just started learning in his early twenties, his climb to comfortable success was rare, yet unusually organic. He performed throughout North America with raving reviews, traversing stages as if he’d been doing so his entire life.
In 2003, as he wrapped up a production in Toronto, Hiroshi was approached by a man from the audience who introduced himself as Hari Krishnan, a local dancer and choreographer. He asked Hiroshi if he had an interest in dancing bharatanatyam, and although Hiroshi didn’t know much about this ancient Indian art, he jumped on board with the opportunity to learn. Discovering a new repertoire was entirely in line with his aspirations- the catch, however, was that he’d have to master this dance form in less than a year.
“Usually when you start taking Bharatanatyam lessons, you really have to do it from the basic steps, one by one. But when I got offered to dance with Hari in a professional piece, he knew I was already a professional contemporary dancer, so he just gave me several private lessons at his home and thought I would be ready,” he says.
To prepare for the scheduled duet, Hiroshi attended these private lessons multiple times a week, which he would record on video and bring back home to continue learning from. But, living on the eighth floor of an apartment building, the repetitious bellow of his adavu steps prompted a complaint from a neighbour that lived two stories below. Little did he know, that this was just the beginning of many hurdles in the coming months of training.
“After each private lesson, I could barely walk. It was so hard, I couldn’t even walk up the stairs,” he says with a laugh. “In modern dance, ballet, you never sit in the same position for a long time. The basic technique is to just keep moving. But for bharatanatyam you have to sit in a half sitting position for what seems like forever!”
Although classically trained, Hari Krishnan was under the tight deadline of a scheduled performance, and therefore, took a different approach to teaching this particular bharatanatyam piece to Hiroshi. “The way that I learned the technique itself, also acted as the rehearsal for me,” Hiroshi says. “The lesson became a rehearsal for the show, so I did not get any spiritual aspect or philosophy when I was learning bharatanatyam techniques.”
Skipping the basics and incorporating contemporary moves, Hiroshi received somewhat of a “fast-track” lesson plan to bharatanatyam, which may sound impossible to some, and Hiroshi agrees that it nearly was. “When I watched the video of my first performance, I realized that I really couldn’t dance bharatanatyam very well because of how quickly I learned…I was under so much pressure to get on that stage within half a year.”
When Hiroshi finally reached the end of his first performance, he shifted his focus on learning proper classical bharatanatyam with Hari. Although he never had a formal arangetram, he learned deeper lessons within the dance, performed intensive pieces on stage and even travelled to Chennai to tour with Hari.
Toronto, 2013
Hiroshi’s dance career became a lively, eclectic mix of classical bharatanatyam, contemporary indian and modern western pieces. However, as time went on, this wave slowly began to fold and, reaching the age of 40, Hiroshi felt it was time to part ways with his self-made career. He returned to Japan, and for more than six months, entirely left the realm of dance that he had thrived in for so long.
“Then, something happened,” he says. “I saw Saiko Yamamoto performing bharatanatyam on stage, and it really moved me. I thought, maybe I should go back to dance…”
Steeping in his immediate connection with Saiko’s performance, Hiroshi attended one of her classes and was instantaneously pulled back in. “I didn’t have any pressure to perform on stage anymore, so when I took her class, I could actually enjoy it. And don’t get me wrong, when I had lessons from Hari Krishnan, of course I really enjoyed it,” he says. “But it was a different type of joy. One was learning with pride, and one was just pure fun.”
Photo by Nachiko Mori
Photo by Hikaru Ito
Plunging back into familiar seas, Hiroshi was forced to re-navigate his path in a somewhat foreign setting. Up to this point, his entire practice, network and learning experience had been conquered in Canada, which, in his words, fosters a very different dance environment than in Japan. “In Toronto, there is a very nice contemporary dance community, but here in Tokyo, it’s too huge. There’s too many dancers, too many artists…So when I moved back here, I really didn’t know how I could get into this contemporary dance community,” he says. “But the Indian dancers here still exist as a community, so once you get in, almost everyone knows each other…It’s funny, when I lived in Canada, my activity as a dance artist was 75% contemporary dance and 25% bharatanatyam. But when I moved back to Japan, it’s like it switched. Now 75% of my dance is bharatanatyam and 25% is contemporary.”
With a more streamlined focus on classical technique, Hiroshi was able to devote his full attention to learning at a deepened pace. With Saiko as his guru, and his mother as his proud costume designer, he slowly kneaded out the discomforts of a new experience and properly prepared himself for the spotlight.
Still a performer today, Hiroshi now also teaches contemporary bharatanatyam and yoga to students who share this same passion for the euphoria of movement. “I think, as a teacher, it’s important to have a good ability to listen to what’s going on in your body, and to share that noise with the students,” he says. “To me, dance has a purpose to share whatever you feel right now- to communicate…Once the audience feels something, that means there is sharing happening between the viewers and the performer. That sharing is very important for me…That’s freedom.”
Perhaps his strong sense of self-awareness and his ability to share that have always been Hiroshi’s secret ingredient in his recipe for success. Entering the dance world with no experience, moving to Canada with no English and thriving in Japan with no network, he has truly defined himself as a crusader of the unknown.
