Regardless of category, Okinawa dances are governed by the strictest, most rigid discipline. Steps, small, slow and measured, hand gestures, delicate and refined, were executed to the music of a sanshin (guitar) and a singer.
The costumes, consistently artistic, had colors blending exquisitely. The headresses – elaborate for the high-born and simple head bands or hats for the village folk – were likewise visually attractive.
Faces, painted chalk white, looked like masks unsmiling for most of the time. In the less constricted communal dances, movement was to a slightly more quickened beat.
Three women did mincing, regulated steps throughout in the opening Yotsudake classical dance, the dancers always following an exact, precise pattern. In the classic kasekake, the soloist did rotating motions with a spinner in hand to signify weaving for a husband with "loving affection" – this explained by the program notes and otherwise undiscerned by the spectator. Popular dances simulated rowing or fishing, the performers using props (e.g., baskets) for the various daily occupations.
A huge backdrop in black depicting a sky illumined by tiny brilliant stars was the setting for the imaginative dance Kohama-bushi. Here, a woman dancer, her bright red kimono contrasting dramatically with the background, seemed to be gently glorifying nature in a paean of praise. She hardly moved from a circumscribed spot yet the poetic, touching concept shone through exquisitely.
The program had its share of humor. In the choreographed Abujana, a seated guitarist plays on his sanshin while a winsome young woman dances. She exits, and another woman enters, her mask delineating a withered countenance. She flirts with the man but unresponsive to her advances, he leaves her.
The creative Ayahaberu was poetry in motion. Colorfully and ornately costumed dancers manipulate twin fans to suggest a scene of butterflies fluttering about.
Ara Yukito provided the musical interlude during intermission, singing and playing on two different guitars, his mode and rhythm intriguingly distinct from those of Western music.
Isami signified karate but even in its imitation of the spirited art of self-defense, its movements were too gentle to be adversarial. Indeed, the total impression Okinawa dances made was that they are so rigorously constricted, their almost uniform style vastly differs from the wide diversity of our own folk dances. Thus, they sometimes border on tedium.
At any rate, the Okinawa performance was illuminating, enriching and highly educational.