You may have seen the 1996 Japanese movie Shall We Dance, about a “sarariman”, or office worker, who found meaning in his humdrum life by taking up ballroom dancing classes. It was one of the most popular Japanese films ever to reach an international audience. I was delighted that its star, Tamiyo Kusakari, and its director, her husband Masayuki Suo, came round to my Residence this week.
The occasion was a lecture by “national treasure” Dame Darcey Bussell, sponsored by the Daiwa Anglo Japanese Foundation. Darcey talked about the importance of dance in people’s lives, in a fascinating presentation vividly illustrated with videos from her own career. They ranged from performances with the Royal Ballet, where she reigned as a prima ballerina for around 20 years, to more recent appearances as a judge on “Strictly Come Dancing”, Britain’s most popular TV show.
We were also joined by Darcey’s great friend Miyako Yoshida, who used to share a dressing room with her at the Royal Ballet. The audience included ballet fans, “Strictly” viewers, people from across the performing arts, and representatives of the diplomatic and business community who had just come along to be wowed by Darcey’s presentation.
Darcey explained that her great project now is to get schoolchildren dancing, to benefit their health and confidence. She showed us videos of her DDMix programme, where children get to experiment with a high energy fusion of many different dance genres from around the world. It was hard to keep our feet still. I really hope we can bring the programme to Japan.
Japanese know and appreciate many of the great cultural institutions based in the UK, from the Royal Ballet, to the London Symphony Orchestra who will be touring here in September and the Natural History Museum who exhibited some of their treasures in Tokyo last year. With the British Council,we will be presenting a British cultural season in Japan running from the Rugby World Cup in 2019 right through to the Olympics and Paralympics in 2020.
The following night, inspired by Darcey, we dropped into a beginners’ Zouk class in a neighbourhood bar with some friends. It was not a great success: we were all fingers and thumbs, or whatever the feet equivalent of that is. Darcey’s colleague Craig Revel Horwood, who plays the role of the mean judge on Strictly, would have had a field day. But we’ll have another go sometime and try to recapture just a little of the magic that Darcey brought into our lives that evening.