Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
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  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
Fantasies of Ito Michio

Fantasies of Ito Michio

Rodman, Tara

Paperback

Series: Theater: Theory/Text/Performance

Entertainment & Performing ArtsDanceJapanese History

Currently unavailable to order

ISBN10: 0472056832
ISBN13: 9780472056835
Publisher: University of Michigan Press
Published: Oct 1 2024
Pages: 340
Weight: 1.18
Height: 0.82 Width: 6.09 Depth: 8.96
Language: English

Winner of the 2025 Dance Studies Association Oscar Brockett Book Prize

Born in Japan and trained in Germany, dancer and choreographer Ito Michio (1893-1961) achieved prominence in London before moving to the U.S. in 1916 and building a career as an internationally acclaimed artist. During World War II, Ito was interned for two years, and then repatriated to Japan, where he contributed to imperial war efforts by creating propaganda performances and performing revues for the occupying Allied Forces in Tokyo. Throughout, Ito continually invented stories of voyages made, artists befriended, performances seen, and political activities carried out--stories later dismissed as false.

Fantasies of Ito Michio argues that these invented stories, unrealized projects, and questionable political affiliations are as fundamental to Ito's career as his 'real' activities, helping us understand how he sustained himself across experiences of racialization, imperialism, war, and internment. Tara Rodman reveals a narrative of Ito's life that foregrounds the fabricated and overlooked to highlight his involvement with Japanese artists, such as Yamada Kosaku and Ishii Baku, and global modernist movements. Rodman offers fantasy as a rubric for understanding how individuals such as Ito sustain themselves in periods of violent disruption and as a scholarly methodology for engaging the past.

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