Person
Biography
Suzushi Hanayagi (1928-2010) enjoyed a wide-ranging career transcending both traditional and avant-garde artforms. She began training in her native Japan, mastering a traditional Kabuki-based style of dance which earned her the right to use the professional name of Hanayagi after learning more than a hundred dances from their repertory. In 1961, she was invited by the Japan Society to study at the Martha Graham School in New York, and she worked with Yoko Ono and Anna Halprin while in the U.S. Three years later, she made her only Pillow appearances, taking part in a then-typical multi-part program along with Edward Villella and Patricia McBride and the Jacob’s Pillow Dancers, while also teaching Japanese dance in the School. Hanayagi collaborated with Robert Wilson on sixteen works with international theater and opera companies starting in the 1980s. After she was incapacitated by dementia, Wilson worked with filmmaker Richard Rutkowski to make a film on Hanayagi called
The Space in Back of You which intermingled footage of his former colleague in her younger and older years. Although Hanayagi died in October 2010, her death was only announced in 2012 at the time of her older sister’s death.
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