Sensational Knowledge: Embodying Culture through Japanese Dance

by Tomie Hahn
Wesleyan University Press, Middlebury, CT, 2007
224 pp. illus. 14 b/w. Trade, $70.00; paper, $26.95 DVD included
ISBN: 978-0-8195-6835-9; ISBN: 978-0-8195-6834-2.

Reviewed by Jonathan Zilberg

jzilberg(at)illinois.edu

Sensational Knowledge is a deft example of contemporary self-reflexive ethnography combining dance and performance studies amongst others notably Asian philosophy and ethnomusicology. Written by a scholar and a dancer, it is informed by a life-long engagement. A deeply sensitive case study of the embodiment of knowledge and its transmission in Japanese culture, specifically of the nihon buyo tradition in which fans are used as extensions of the body as swords are in the samurai tradition, it succeeds with grace and energy, discipline and precision as befitting this dance discipline and Japanese aesthetics more generally.

One of Tomie Hahn's central goals is to re-appropriate the Orientalist image of the iconic figure of the geisha revealing and concealing her body with a fan. Doing so she tells a very different story. Beyond deftly synthesizing the historical and anthroplogical discussions on the history, culture and qualities of the nihon buyo tradition, her central focus is to convey the multi-sensory nature of dance transmission. In order to enhance the analysis, an accompanying DVD provides examples of dance transmission adding a vital element to the discussions of sensory pedagogy.

As the DVD conveys, the key difference between learning nihon buyo and other dance traditions such as other classical Asian dances and ballet is that "the art of following forms the foundation . . . " (p. 86) rather than learning individual postures and components first. In attending to this essential process, a flow experience, Hahn provides an extremely effective study for embodied dance scholarship. In this Sensational Knowledge will be particularly interesting for those who are concerned with combining historical and ethnographic appreciation of a cultural form with the rigors of such analytic and long term experiential or more specifically, embodied learning.

The central chapter, "Revealing Lessons" examines different modes of transmission, namely visual, tactile, oral/aural and finally the lesser use of notation and video as teaching aids of. In discussing how best to use the DVD, Hahn calls attention to the time stamps that mark specific moments that are referred to in the text.   For instance, in the first example of learning the classic formal celebratory dance The Evergreen Pine, we are introduced to the narrative dimension of Japanese dance and the very distinct and acutely precise formality of the style.

Above all, though Hahn's concern is to use these videos to illustrate transmission and thus focus on the processes of embodied learning, what might stand out to the outsider perhaps, that is the reader and viewer with essentially no knowledge of Japanese dance, is the contrasts between the students and their teacher's motion which intensifies our recognition of the precision and strength of the sensu 's motion and every gesture in addition to the pedagogy of flow experience. This adds enormous visual power to Hahn's discussions of how the quality of one's dance is an embodiment of one's character and lived experience, of one's cultural authority, knowledge and respect gained in time.

In watching the different lessons on the DVD my personal interests in aesthetics insistently took over in comparing the preciseness of the teacher's motion and her contained focused energy and the lack of such force and definition in the students motions. It impelled in me a strong intellectual sense of desire to see an analysis of the evolution of dance competence, that is, how the best of the students in time gradually acquire a closer approximation of the precision and grace of the sensu .

One of the most compelling aspects of the book is Hahn's discussion of sound and dance. Take for instance her notes after a particularly memorable lesson in which "sight and sound intertwined": "We did not dance to the music; we embodied the music" (pp. 114).   Exploring this through a fascinating conjunction of sensory precision and the sensuous, she describes a process of achieving kinaesthetic harmony through the intimacy of being cued by Iemoto's, her sensui 's breath.

This recalls the great subtlety of this study. Earlier in the book Hahn describes the relationship between dance and breath in the song Kurokami (Jet-black Hair), a song about the longing of a woman for her departed lover. As she writes:

"Each phrase consists of several movements, framed by held poses that add to the feeling of stillness ( ma ) and the melancholy mood. In this deceivingly simple dance structure, every breath is apparent and, to a degree choreographed. An inhale opens the dancer's chest above the obi (sash) and send barely noticeable movement across the shoulders, neck, and torso. Her inhale is timed within the phrase, held momentarily ( ma ), and with her exhale the energy of release instigates the vitality of the next movement. This cycle of breath - from inhale, suspension of breath, and exhale - imparts a stunning flow of tension and release." (p. 57)

Consider then this subtle richness that mirrors the minimalist simplicity of the seventeenth century poem referred to and consider in addition the way in which Japanese music creates sonic landscapes through aural cues. Enfold that with the idea that in singing such dances, the fan itself is used as a vehicle for evoking the metaphorical associations of falling petals and changing seasons, waves running up the shore. Intensely choreographed,   the dancer stepping quickly back from the waves, the life of the tree re-enacted, the helpless longing of a lover and the voice of a temple bell in the quiet night silver snow piling up,   the highly practiced embodied memories of generation after generation of teacher and student endures precisely.

Hahn's contributions go further. Towards concluding she dwells upon the transformative effects of extraordinary experience and how the best ethnography embodies and transmits a shift in subjectivity. She illustrates this through returning to the first segment of the DVD, the dance "Matsu no Midori" in which the performer has to be able convincingly portray several different persona. To being Hahn emphasizes her sensui 's directive: "without experiencing life, without personality, you have no dance, no kokoro [heart, spirit, or soul], and you are invisible . . . but if you have a sense of self, then you can become any character onstage - a woman, a young boy, an old man" (p. 154). Then she uses this for an extended exegesis of believability, code switching and an all-important insight into the expansive consciousness achieved through enacting multiple identities.

Finally, Sensational Knowledge considers the flow of ki energy and returns to accentuate that every dance performance and lesson is about experiencing flow and learning to achieve it. Extending John Berger's Ways of Seeing (1972), she expands his insight to note that the way we sense, rather than merely see things, is culturally informed, that the embodied learning of sensational knowledge through the sensuality of dance has the broadest relevance to our lives.