Tetsuya Kumakawa, In the Comfort Zone

For a man considered an icon in Japan’s performing arts world, Tetsuya Kumakawa, in person, is surprisingly down-to-earth. Smiling and self-deprecating, he seems as unpretentious and straightforward as the relaxed jeans and white t-shirt he’s wearing. I wonder at this easygoing charm; it’s quite different from the usual bows and careful reserve in Japanese interviews. But it does feel comfortable.

Tetsuya Kumakawa in rehearsal with K-Ballet. Photograph courtesy of the company

Perhaps comfort is key for today. It will be a long day to cap an insanely busy month. The last thirty days have seen 17 performances of K-Ballet Tokyo’s newest production, “Mermaid” in four different cities across the nation. As the company’s founder and artistic director, Kumakawa oversaw every aspect from writing the scenario to selecting the music (compositions from the Russian great Alexander Glazunov) collaborating on costumes, lighting and sets and, of course, the choreography. It’s another completely original production, this time marking the company’s 25th anniversary season. As usual for K-Ballet Tokyo, it’s been a huge success, and later today, the consistently sold-out run of performances will end.

Simply as a dancer, there’s no question that Kumakawa deserves his iconic stature. He moved to England to join the Royal Ballet School at 15 years old, five years after starting ballet in Hokkaido, the northern island of Japan where he was born. Two years later, he became the first Japanese national to receive a Gold Medal at the prestigious Prix de Lausanne. He joined tthe Royal Ballet UK, the first Asian ever, and became the youngest soloist in their history at 17. He was a principal by the age of 21, in 1993. Before he left, five years later, Kumakawa had performed all the major dramatic roles with the Royal Ballet, while a who’s who list of modern choreographers—Roland Petit, Twyla Tharpe, Sir Frederick Ashton—created roles for him.

That's a quick summary of Teddy Kumakawa, as he’s affectionately known in the UK, whom most of the dance world knows and reveres. But that’s not even half of his accomplishments. In the 25 years since his return to Japan, leaving in 1998 at the height of his career to launch K-Ballet, Kumakawa has been steadily changing the landscape of the performing arts in his home country.

Tetsuya Kumakawa in “Le Corsaire.” Photograph by Shunki Ogawa

It’s not only through his years as a star dancer here, building up his successful company (without any government support) one sold-out performance after another while also overseeing each production as artistic director. Kumakawa also founded and keeps expanding a vast network of schools culminating in the K-Ballet Academy, officially established in 2023 as a pipe-line to the professional level. Since 2012, he took on the inaugural role of artistic director for one of Tokyo’s most beautiful theaters, Bunkamura’s Orchard Hall, part of a larger cultural center near the world-famous Shibuya scramble that is currently undergoing a renovation and expansion that will see the area transformed into a mini city-within-a-city, catering to the cultural arts. He also established the Kumakawa Foundation last year to support young dancers in need—while still finding time to publish a bestselling memoir in 2019, The Realm of Perfection, about the overall goal of artistic pursuits, and his own personal growth after an injury on-stage in 2007 curtailed his dancing for a year. Kumakawa further added duties as an official Tokyo Tourism ambassador in 2023. Oh, and all his awards, including the Medal of Honor with Purple Ribbon from the Japanese government and the Montblanc Cultural Prize, leading roles in two movies and a TV series appearance, starring as himself.

It’s tiring to even list out his accomplishments, and I’m sure I’ve missed something. But when asked how he does it, Kumakawa laughs and shrugs helplessly:

“Yeah, I get so many questions like, how can you oversee all these different aspects, there’s so many individual strands, and each takes a lot of effort. The Academy itself is so hard to run, the overall organization, and then the schools . . . you only have 24 hours, how do you do it? That’s what you’re wondering about, yeah?”

He pauses briefly, then laughs again.

“Well, so am I. But I just try not to overthink it.”

K-Ballet Tokyo in“Mermaid” by Tetsuya Kumakawa. Photograph by Ayumu Gombi

It’s an idea that will come up often. Like when we’re discussing his process for creating “Mermaid” or any of his other purely original productions like “Cleopatra” (2017) or “Madame Butterfly” (2019)—surely he immersed himself in historical research or worked from an intricate, methodical plan? Kumakawa shakes his head with a rueful smile—he didn’t even reread the original Hans Christian Anderson story.

“I'm telling you truly, with “Mermaid”, I didn't know how it ended before I went to the studio,” he says. “In the studio, I spoke to the musicians first, saying, okay, give me Glazunov, which selection? Okay, let's pick this one, pick this one, pick this one, and then I simply listen to the music. The music shows me, oh, let's bring in the lobster here. Oh, let's bring in the mermaids here. Inspiration just comes down to me. It's like my life. I don't plan it. Which is better, when you try to make a speech in front of a 1000 people, you know, you're trying to learn the script and memorize the whole thing, everything pushed inside your head? But if you don't plan it, you can speak like that,” he snaps his fingers, punctuating the sentence.

Kumakawa leans back, satisfied to make his point. “It just comes.”

I’m nodding along to his enthusiasm, although I have no opinion on the preferred method of preparing a speech for 1,000 people. We’re speaking in English, by the way, since after ten minutes into the interview, it becomes obvious that Kumakawa’s grasp of my native language is much higher than my grasp of his, despite the fact that he spent a mere ten years in the UK (doing a few other things besides studying English) while I’ve spent nearly 27 years in Japan. Whatever the language, it is difficult to find even a smidgeon of artifice. Kumakawa really is down to earth, sincere, and funny. It’s obvious he loves talking about what he loves.

But he’s serious about the over-thinking idea. It comes up again soon, with his schools. It’s an innovative, comprehensive educational network catering to all levels and ages with various branches and courses, including the recently added (and booming) Adult Male Ballet Beginner classes in Tokyo. One of the schools, branded Teddy’s Ballet and featuring a stylized bear and pink logo, emphasizes movement and developing artistic sensitivity alongside more traditional study. Most of the students don’t even realize it’s part of the Kumakawa system. It’s always been important to him, making ballet accessible to everyone.

“In ballet, when someone is labeled as talented or a prodigy, everyone inevitably steps back, becomes intimidated; suddenly, it feels like the entrance to that level becomes incredibly narrow. But ballet isn't about awarding points. In a sense, it's about developing your own personal judgment,” he says.

“It changes somewhat as a professional, but even professionals must become their own judge. It’s different from the Olympics, where sports judgements are so clear. Ballet can be arbitrary; if the artistic director thinks it's good, you can do it, but if another artistic director thinks it's not good, you can’t. It's a severe world. Being labeled gifted myself, I’ve felt that outside judgment my entire life. For that reason, I didn’t want to make the entrance to ballet narrow; I wanted to make education open to everyone at the first entry point.”

Tetsuya Kumakawa with K-Ballet at curtain for “Mermaid.” Photograph by Yoshitomo Okuda

Over the past two decades, his educational system has grown to naturally position the K-Ballet Academy at its top. Before its opening in September 2023, Kumakawa brought over Kenta Kura to direct the Academy and oversee all of the K-Ballet Schools.

Kura, a former Foundation and Development Programme educator with the Royal Ballet School, followed in Kumakawa’s footsteps to enter the Royal Ballet School as a student in 1995 and later joined the Company, where he was promoted to Soloist in 2006. He retired in 2014 to start his educational career, staying with The Royal Ballet at its famous White Lodge in Richmond Park, a former Royal hunting lodge and home to The Royal Ballet School's younger students, aged 11-16. Kura was honored last year in his selection as a judge for the Youth America Grand Prix (YAGP) Finals, held in New York, the first Japanese ever.

Kura also recently collaborated with Kumakawa to codify the Kumakawa Method, an educational philosophy Kumakawa developed over decades as he perfected ways to lead his young company.

As Kumakawa explains, “When it came to dance, I couldn’t analyze well, because I didn’t know why I was able to do the things that others couldn’t do, you know? It was so easy for me to move my body without thinking. Later, I realized as a director that I had to use words to pass on the techniques and allow my dancers to understand first in their heads, in order to create the movements with their bodies. It wasn’t yet in my dictionary, but at some point, I realized I needed to develop better vocabulary to pass on different techniques of movement.”

“The method springs from a combination of all sorts of influences like culture, background, skin, blood, muscle, anatomy,” Kumakawa continues. “We must take advantage of our fast-twitch muscles that are responsible for explosive, quick movements like a whip or fireworks, but also to develop the lovely slow movement that flows with the soft quality of an adagio.”

“By focusing on Asian dancers, nobody has really analyzed and put all that into one book before, considering various aspects, not just what you see or how you dance, but really digging into our cultural heritage. It has a similarity in approach throughout Asia. China, Korea, even Vietnam or Malaysia, Singapore these days, so in expanding the Method throughout Asia, if I can be helpful to those students who are learning ballet, without them having to go abroad to Western countries to study, that's a good opportunity.”

Without Kura, Kumakawa admits, he probably wouldn’t have written it down as an official system.

“Kenta started to analyze my movements and he brought such a different perspective, with his different abilities and personality too, coming at it like a true ballet educator, his genuine love of studying technique; he can do it all day. With his experience back in the UK, combined with my movement, eventually he approached me to formalize the Method into a book, which I never really had any intention to do before he came. Obviously, he started it, and I became just a puppet, like his guinea pig, because I still don't know 100% of myself with movement, but he thinks he knows 150% of myself.”

“I also have an admiration for him, for what he's been through, what he’s experienced, and what he's trying to give back to dance education and this world through his eyes.”

The idea for the Kumakawa Foundation also naturally arose from both his Company and experiences in ballet education, wanting not only a future home for his vast range of choreography, but to establish something to help talented students financially, on a larger scale than just tuition scholarships.

“We are now into our second year since I established it last July 7. So in two years, we’ve made such a difference; I've already felt very touched and honored to be able to help,” Kumakawa explains. From providing stipends for living expenses to counter inflation to offering the opportunity to attend world-class performing arts productions in order to strengthen their artistic sensitivity, the Foundation currently supports three students in overseas study.

When I bring up the possibility of an overseas tour for K-Ballet Tokyo or perhaps a collaboration with an European, Australian or North American Company, Kumakawa welcomes the idea. “I do hope to share our productions some day to audiences around the world, and I am open to collaborations or if a Company wants to perform my work,” he says. As Kumakawa points out, it requires more than just a financial commitment to stage his productions overseas: “You must establish a relationship, find a way of collaborating with an opera house or Company across the globe. I hope to, in the future.”

According to Kumakawa, there is no methodical, systematic plan (of course), and he too expresses surprise by how well everything aligns in his career, up to this point.

“In some ways,” he concludes, “it was just a coincidence that K-Ballet Tokyo, the schools, the Academy and now the Kumakawa Foundation, ended up becoming one vast organization. But it was probably the gradual combination of each aspect feeding into the next aspect naturally, so that the whole gained movement and momentum.”

K-Ballet perform “Cleopatra” by Kumakawa. Photograph by Hidemi Seto

To end, the conversation turns to what motivates or inspires him as an artist. “When you're going through your 50s, you sort of see yourself simultaneously in the past and in the future. Because you're somewhere in between, and sort of standing back to see yourself clearly, because you don't need to carry on running towards somewhere anymore. You can relax in a sense, lay back and see yourself.”

“Because also in running a business within any artistic industry, you have to possess sincere truth in yourself, particularly within artistic education,” he continues.

“My students need to gain more than what they pay for. Throughout their lives over time, even if the children are not successful at becoming a ballerina or a dancer, I want them to succeed as a person, as a human being. If I didn't have their future in mind, this further plan for children, then I'm just a money-digger, you know, which I hate. I don't want to hate myself. Children are absolutely the future of our planet. If I can't be honest to myself, honest in my expression and creations, these 1000 children who are part of my schools, what am I teaching them?”

When I ask him what artist from the past he identifies with, he chooses a composer instead of a dancer, without even, well, stopping to think—or perhaps thinking aloud, in the moment.

“With Beethoven,” he starts, “he really suffered in his life, and he wanted to be looked at in a certain way by other people. ‘Look at me, I am struggling. I'm finding it so hard to compose. I need to walk through the forest to listen to the little birds, and the trees swaying and the river running and thunder coming on. Okay, I make that kind of music, da-da-da-dum.’ Or, like Mozart. ‘This is a piece of cake! Oh, here we go! Throwing everything together, like a great, tossed salad of life’, Mozart. Who would I be? I think obviously I am more like Mozart, with his kind of personality as well. Watching the movie, Amadeus, it is easy to imagine that Mozart found a lot of joy in his day to day.”

He feels lucky, he says, to be doing what he loves, and the type of person he is, who enjoys living in the moment. “As we get older, we want to leave something to the next generation. It’s priceless, the opportunity to educate today’s children, passing on both an artistic sensibility and technical education, and this is where the strength of the Foundation, education, the strength of creating productions like “Mermaid,” resides.”

And that’s it.

When I thank him for the interview, and his kindness in switching to English, he demures, insisting he’s been accused in the past of just “being a big mouth.”

“But I’ve always been saying the same things,” he says. “When I was 20, I said the same things; now that I’m over 50, they accept it, but they didn't accept it when I was 20.”

Kumakawa thanks me as well, and then walks away quickly. It’s still two hours before the curtain on closing night. There’s probably a dozen small details to attend before changing clothes for the final performance. This one is being live-streamed across the nation by one of Japan’s leading streaming services, U-Next.

Later, after countless curtain calls, the jubilant cast buoyed and grinning to the standing ovation throughout Orchard Hall, the red curtains close and then open once again to a renewed frenzy of applause. There’s Kumakawa striding on-stage, wearing the same jeans and white t-shirt from earlier, only now under a dark K-Ballet jumper. He applauds the dancers, the orchestra, and the audience before sweeping into a single graceful bow that he spins into a jaunty, derriére twist to waves of delighted laughter.

In less than thirty seconds, Kumakawa leaves the stage to his dancers. It’s a moment of irreverent fun and joy. A maestro, comfortable in his own skin. And I’m quite sure, not thinking at all.

Kris Kosaka

Kris Kosaka is a writer and educator based in Kamakura, Japan. A lifelong ballet fan and studio rat in her youth, she's been contributing to The Japan Times since 2009. She writes across Culture, but especially in dance, opera and literature.

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