Join the Japanese Arts Foundation at Asian Improv Arts Midwest’s home dojo for a one of a kind conversation with today’s leading Traditional Japanese performing artists! This conversation highlights women performers who are leading the future of their art through teaching and performance, while handing down traditions as they continue the centuries long legacy of Japanese performing arts.

Among the international performers:

Umeya Takane:  certified performer from the traditional Umeya clans (Tsuzumi & Narimono) respectively. She has been active in Nagauta, a form of Japanese Classical music used in Kabuki, the theater genre with origins in the dramatic dance of the early seventeenth-century  Tokugawa shogunate. Performed first by all-female ensembles, Kabuki gained popularity for its eroticism among the lower-class population before being banned and changed to all-male ensembles. Kabuki re-emerged in the early Meiji period and today is per-formed frequently in theaters and on television. Nagauta was incorporated into Kabuki theater in the eighteenth century and is still performed by an ensemble utilizing traditional Japanese instrumentation, with shamisen as the main instrument accompanied by taiko drum, tsuzumi hip drum, kotsuzumi shoulder drum, and n kan flute. Takane Umeya is among only a handful of certified classical players in Japan today and in high demand as house musicians for Kabuki and Nagauta Music. She performs frequently in classical and festival music concerts, and collaborations with contemporary music and media arts.