Music: Dancers to the Emperor

On the elevated platform, with its black-and-red-lacquered railings and its bright green flooring, four dancers in silk brocade robes turned their green-masked faces to the audience. The translucent music wavered hypnotically, swelling and fading in little drum-punctuated strands of sound. The dancers flexed their knees slowly, extended their slippered feet to describe airy figures on the dance cloth.

Thus in Manhattan’s City Center last week, a 1,200-year-old dance ritual stirred to life. Occasion: the first appearance outside Japan of the Musicians and Dancers of the Japanese Imperial Household.

The highly stylized mixture of musical drama and myth that the Imperial Dancers brought with them is known as Gagaku, meaning “noble and elegant music.” Imported to Japan from China in the 8th century A.D., Gagaku was confined to the court in the 17th century, has been seen by the general public only since the end of World War II. No longer supported by the court, the troupe still uses the resplendent gold-and-silk costumes privately owned by the Emperor; a Pinkerton man is guarding them during the troupe’s 16 Manhattan performances. (The troupe will also go on a cross-country tour, with stops at Boston, Washington, Seattle, San Francisco, Los Angeles.)

Gagaku’s dances unfold stories of childlike simplicity in a context of barbaric splendor: a Mongol wanders the forest seeking a golden snake, finds it coiled at his feet, crouches in his stiffly encrusted robes to eat it, performs an angular dance of joy; four dancers in court dress, with cherry blossoms in their headgear, unfold with caressing steps from a circle, suggesting the blossoms in the imperial garden opening under the May sun. Even without masks, the dancers’ faces are as unwaveringly expressionless as carvings in jade. The body movements are slow, solemn, almost architectural, with the fluctuation of mood sometimes indicated by nothing more than an inclination of the head or the clenching of a fist.

To a Western audience the dance fragments with their muted accompaniment of drums, flute or plucked strings may at first seem too contained to be powerfully stirring. But once the spectator grows accustomed to Gagaku’s own laws of time and space, the dance becomes an unforgettable illustration of the unsuspected beauties of repose, the high drama that can be compressed in small-scale patterns.