This Tuesday night the Hopkins Center will be hosting Warabi-Za, a group of Japanese folk performers, to add international flavor to the otherwise Dartmouth-centered week of Winter Carnival. The performers vary the subjects of their shows among different regional traditions, and work closely with the artifacts and legends of the area of their focus in preparation for each new project. Tuesday night's show bears the special importance of being the troupe's last, as they will return to archival work on their heritage after this last visit.
While educational in purpose, students should not let midterm fatigue keep them away from this performance. Warabi-Za enlightens its audience as to the variety of ways art can enrich as well as widen minds to the breadth of cultural tradition that may soon vanish as technology replaces the individual villages of places as Northern Japan, with the global village.
Warabi-Za calls itself a "creative team" since their work evades the categorization of dance, theater, performance art or history. The group begins with a theme for each performance and structures the presentation from that theme, generally mixing professional musicians and choreographers with the volunteer efforts of the regional community whose culture the show will honor. Guest artists also help Warabi-Za, studying the cultural artifacts and history and gleaning inspiration from records of past traditions. All the diverse creations of Warabi-Za are based in non-verbal communication, however, which adds an extra element of interest for the Western viewer, and differentiates these performances from operas or musicals in the American experience.
Warabi-Za began as a performing arts company in 1951 with three members attempting to raise the morale and national pride of those rebuilding Tokyo after the wreckage of the second World War. The troupe's founder, Taro Hara, played folk songs on his accordion as his colleagues danced and sang for those devastated by the war. The group used these early performances as inspiration for widening their audience later on.
They chose the TaZawako Art Village in Akita Prefecture as their base in 1953, where they found archives of Japanese folk music as well as a naturally beautiful setting. Until 1960, Warabi-Za stayed centered in Northern Japan, but then began to spread throughout the country. In 1974, after having collected many donations during the 20 years of their work, Warabi-Za built its own theater.
This location proves as interesting in concept as the work that stems out of it, since Warabi-Za describes TaZawako as "a combination resort and creative arts center." The community around the Art Village devotes itself to the preservation and enrichment of the Northern Japanese folk culture, which seems an increasingly worthy cause as the phenomenon of globalization gains momentum worldwide. Warabi-Za Theater, Folk Arts Research Center, the Fossil Museum, hot springs and brewery all are based at the Art Village and greet inquisitive crowds of upwards of 300,000 visitors annually. The group that grew out from that region has enjoyed similar success in the 55 years since its institution. Warabi-Za's five companies perform about 1,000 shows in Japan every year and its artists have traveled to sixteen countries across Asia, Europe and the Americas.
Two-thirds of Warabi-Za's various performances in and outside of Japan take place in schools, and 100,000 Japanese school children visit their base at TaZawako each year, enjoying an agricultural element unique to the Japanese audience. Seven hundred local farmers educate the schoolchildren in growing rice so that they gain a balance in practical and artistically-enriching education thanks to the institution. Warabi-Za believes it logical to offer this varied education to their young visitors since rice has traditionally been so crucial to the Japanese culture, specifically in rural regions.
The cultural basis of Warabi-Za's performance lends itself well to musical portrayal, as the group explains, because of the rhythm ingrained in the agricultural lifestyle of the people of Northern Japan. Reliant on crops, farmers cultivate a very deep sense of synchronization with seasons, but also the daily motions of the farmer at work "in the fields and rice paddies, on the ocean and in the mountains ... had a rhythm to it." Together with this sense of community, there exists an awareness of preserving the solidarity among farmers living to the same beat. This inspires Warabi-Za both abstractly and in the very music they create to evoke this culture.
The natural beauty of Northern Japan inspires the folk performers. The spirituality of the culture stems as much from the awareness of seasons and prayer for healthy crops as it does from the Shinto religion itself, Warabi-Za believes. The artists state their philosophy clearly, "As the connection between individuals becomes weaker in the technology dependent world, Warabi-Za continues to offer a message of a fundamental human way of life in which real human emotions are expressed and trusted."
