35 Years with Session House!!
Yasuyo Omoto has been responsible for ballet classes since Session House’s founding in 1991, contributing in countless ways and sometimes taking the stage as a dancer herself. She shares her feelings about those 35 years.
Yasuyo Omoto
My first visit to Session House was while the floor was being installed. A senior colleague at the Momoko Tani Ballet Company, to which I belonged, introduced me, and I went to Kagurazaka to meet Mr. and Mrs. Ito. They spoke passionately about wanting to develop all sorts of dance performances and classes in this basement studio, and I felt excited as I listened.
When it opened, I began teaching the intermediate and advanced classical ballet classes. Every weekend, just as its name suggests, it became a place for sessions bringing together many kinds of art, with stimulating performances unfolding.
In July 1993, for the second anniversary, I too was given the chance to try my first solo dance: a session with jazz pianist Fumio Itabashi (板橋文夫). I prepared with advice from Naoko Ito after only a short discussion, but since I had never danced improvisationally before, it was a time filled with tension and a strange exhilaration.
Yasuyo Omoto in the children’s class
For me, this first experimental dance performance became a precious experience that broadened my perspective as a ballet dancer and expanded the range of my activities afterward.
After that, there were more sessions directed and choreographed by Naoko: a solo titled “Winding On” (蜿々たり), “Longing to See You, Longing to See You” (あいたくて、あいたくて) with Mademoiselle Cinema, and in 2000 “Washed Ashore in Tokyo” (Tokyo漂着) with trumpeter Itaru Oki (沖至) and pianist Natsumi Sawada (沢田菜津美). Each was a heart-pounding, exciting session.
About a year after the opening, it was also suggested that I try a ballet class for children, and I began teaching once a week. The children grew through wonderful repeated experiences of showing parents and friends the results of their regular lessons in a space transformed into a small theater. Among the students who have grown up and entered working life, some have chosen careers related to dance or ballet and are active in them, some have become dependable mothers, and some have become ballet teachers and now teach our “children’s ballet classes.”
I am filled with deep gratitude to Session House, which has continued to give me so many experiences and opportunities to learn.
Session House will surely remain a place that brings us into contact with still more different people and keeps stimulating us.
