Traditional Bon Odori dances live on in 91-year-old performer

When 91-year-old Helen Yamamoto first started dancing, she was 4 years old.

World War I had ended, women were earning the right to vote and TV hadn't been invented. Eighty-seven years later, Yamamoto is still at it: She'll be dancing today and Sunday at Seattle Buddhist Temple at Seattle's 75th annual Bon Odori, a traditional Buddhist festival to honor ancestors.

Yamamoto has participated in Bon Odori festivals and has danced in the Seattle festival since the 1950s — back when the dancers wore silken kimonos, wigs and white make-up, and minced their way over cobblestone streets downtown.

Since performing her first dance in 1919, Yamamoto has abandoned the traditional costume ("It's really hot," she explains) and wooden shoes ("I'd fall on my face!") in favor of a short, loose cape — a hapi coat — and rubber-soled shoes. But, many of the dances she learned as a little girl remain the same.

"Goshu Ondo!" says Eileen Tokita, Yamamoto's niece, citing the name of the last song played at Bon Odori each year. "It's the exact same as it has always been. We could dance that one in our sleep."

Tokita learned to dance from Yamamoto's mother, Fuku Nakatani, in her basement-turned-dance-studio, next door to the Seattle Buddhist Temple. While Nakatani has died, many of the dances she choreographed have been passed on and will be performed this weekend.

Now, the task of teaching the traditional dances to a younger generation falls on four new instructors, all of whom were first trained by Yamamoto's mother.

"We inherited all these 80-year-old dances," says Gwen Florence, one of the instructors. "So we're at a point where we're trying to keep that tradition, while at the same time getting the younger generation involved."

While Seattle's festival has become more racially diverse and less formal over the last 75 years, the Seattle festival still is relatively traditional, Florence says.

The Rev. Hoshu Matsubayashi of the Seattle Buddhist Temple explains that in the phrase "Bon Odori," the word "Bon" has several meanings. It makes reference to a story of a mother's sacrifice in Buddhist lore, but it also means "tray" — as in something on which you'd present an offering. "Odori" means dance. Taken together, the two words suggest the coming together of spiritual and physical joy, he says.

"We really want people to come out there and have a good time," Florence says.

"But at the same time, when you're out there dancing and the streets are crowded with people and it's the same street you've been dancing on for 50 years, you feel the presence of those who are gone. You miss them, but you can also feel all the generations there with you."

Haley Edwards: 206-464-2745 or hedwards@seattletimes.com

Auburn Bon Odori 4:30 to 9:30 p.m. next Saturday at the White River Buddhist Temple, 3625 Auburn Way N., Auburn (253-833-1442 or www.whiteriverbuddhisttmpl.org).