Genetically a hundred percent Japanese, Denise
Fujiwara’s grandparents settled in various parts of B.C. When the Second
World War broke out, Japanese Canadians were punished by being forced into
internment camps, but that was where Denise’s
parents met. Despite the indignities of their dislocated lives, the
Fujiwaras have never been bitter about their ill treatment. “They’re very
Japanese,” Denise comments. “There’s a saying: ‘It could not be helped.’
They recognize that it was a larger political situation that they had no
control over, and that their generation did the best they could, and let it
go. Although I must say it did mean a great deal to them when they got a
formal apology from the government.” But what did her parents feel about the
American nuclear attack on Hiroshima and Nagasaki? “They’re Canadians. That
happened very far away, and yes, it was a terrible thing but it’s not
something we talk about. Being born here, we don’t have the scar tissue that
our ancestors have, and I think it’s a great thing that Canadians have a
chance to start over and not keep the wounds that our forebears may have.
Canada is a wonderful place, and Toronto is a wonderful place—a huge social
experiment. It’s not perfect but it works very well when you look at what’s
happening in other places in the world.”
Denise’s artistic mother (who painted, did photography, and danced professionally, even appearing as a Chinese dancer in one of the first Canadian feature films ever made) encouraged her to study ballet and contemporary dance, though when Denise decided she was going to major in dance at university, her father got a little worried. “He thought I should be a teacher or nurse or something more practical. But really there was no stopping me.” As an elite rhythmic gymnast on the national team, she received a little government funding that helped pay for part of her university studies in the Honours B.F.A. Performance Program at York University, and when she quit the sport, she worked part time. She began her professional career in 1978, her final year at university, starting the Toronto Independent Dance Enterprise with friends who had graduated a year ahead of her. The group lasted till 1989, but in 1986 Denise’s dance career changed when she saw Natsu Nakajima of Tokyo performing Butoh in Montreal. Nakajima’s work “was mature, moving, life-affirming, complex, sophisticated.” Alas, Nakajima was not interested in having Denise study with her. “When I asked if I could learn some work from her, No. That’s not how it is done in Japan. You just can’t learn somebody’s repertoire.” So that should have been it—but it wasn’t. Nakajima returned to Canada a few times over the next nine years, and through the intercession of Elizabeth Langley, then the Chair of the Dance Department at Concordia University, Montreal, Denise got to work with Nakajima who choreographed Sumida River (1994) for her, helping Denise seal her reputation as Butoh dancer nationally and internationally. It also helped that Denise did go to Tokyo in the late 90s to study with Yoshito Ono, son of the legendary Kazuo Ono who was in his nineties at the time. “Kazuo was quite ill, but he would often visit the studio.” She was in the middle of an improvisation exercise when he entered. “Though he couldn’t walk on his own, he motioned to his helpers that he wanted to dance. They put him down on the dance floor, and propped him up every time he fell over. Out of the corner of my eye I would watch him struggling and dancing and struggling, and then I realized: Oh, here’s the living embodiment of Hijikata’s statement: ‘Butoh is a corpse standing straight up in a desperate bid for life.’ At that point, I burst into tears. It was an epiphany to see the dance embodied in that way.”
De
nise
founded Fujiwara Dance Inventions in 1991 to “express the mysteries of human
nature as they are manifest in the body before words.” She currently teaches
a course called Contemplative Dance that has participants ranging from
senior Canadian dancers to non-dancers. She also tours her dance works in
Canada and Europe. At present, she has six solo pieces in her repertoire,
but her most celebrated ones are two based on Japanese legend. Sumida
River hails from a 15th century Noh play (Sumidagawa)
in which a mother grieves for her lost child who dies after being kidnapped
by a merchant. In ash white makeup, wearing a loose garment and a conical
hat, Denise first appeared to be a corpse in a dark, barren landscape. Then
slowly, arduously she struggled to arise, weighed down by her fabric, her
face a frieze of grief and desolation, her mind wrinkled by memories of her
dead child whose ghost she seemed to see as she descended into madness.
Komachi was created for Denise by Yukio Waguri in 2005, and it is inspired by a number of Noh plays about a beautiful 9th century noblewoman who wrote poems about love, solitude, and passion while causing romantic scandals by her torment of lovers. In her old age, after beauty fled her, she lived as a hermit on a mountain and was quite mad, with spells of brilliant lucidity. The dance is a representation of Komachi in her old age as she dreams of her decadent youth and his haunted by the ghosts of her tormented lovers.
Sumida River has been performed internationally and Denise will dance it again for the City Opera of Vancouver (May 26-30) on a double bill with Benjamin Britten’s Curlew River, a 20th century opera inspired by Sumidagawa. But preceding this will be Denise’s new solo piece, Lost and Found, which she is creating for Danceworks at the Enwave Theatre, March 4-6. Surely enough to keep her busy as she has to divide her time among her dancing, teaching and family. Her husband and two teenage sons are supportive of her art but are sometimes perplexed by it because it is so foreign to Western traditions and ideas of dance.
(An edited
version of this profile appeared in the March issue of Forever Young)
pic 1: Denise
Fujiwara in "Sumida River" (photo: Cylla von Tiedemann)
pic 2: Denise Fujiwara in "Komachi" (photo: John Lauener)
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