Michio Itō

Michio Itō (伊藤 道郎, Itō Michio, 13 April 1892 - 6 November 1961) was a Japanese dancer who developed his own choreography style in Europe and America. He left Japan as a teenager to study classic music in Paris. After learning musical theory Dalcroze eurhythmics, Hellerau in Germany, he started to explore modern dance. He was an associate of William Butler Yeats, Ezra Pound, Angna Enters, Isamu Noguchi, Louis Horst, Ted Shawn, Martha Graham, Lillian Powell, Vladimir Rosing, Pauline Koner, Lester Horton and others. He danced with the Anglo-Indian dancer Roshanara in 1917, and with French-Indian dancer Nyota Inyoka in 1923-1924.

He was interned and eventually deported from the United States after the outbreak of World War II.

• Song of India (1920)
• Dawn of the East (1921)
• Lotus Land (1928)
• Madame Butterfly (1932)
• Spawn of the North (1938)
• The Sunset Murder Case (1941)

• Caldwell, Helen. Michio Ito: The Dancer and His Dances. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1977.
• Cohen-Stratyner, Barbara Naomi. 1982. Biographical dictionary of dance. New York: Schirmer Books.
• Cowell, M. (2001). Dance chronicle: Michio Ito in Hollywood: Modes and Ironies of Ethnicity. Taylor & Francis.
• Cowell, M., & Shimazaki, S. (1994). "East and West in the Work of Michio Ito", Dance Research Journal, 26(2), 11-23. doi:1. Retrieved from https://www.jstor.org/stable/1477913 doi:1.
• The Dances of Michio Ito (2007), a film produced by the Chamber Dance Company. Performances taped in 2001 at the Meany Theatre and the Meany Studio Theatre, University of Washington; dances reconstructed by Taeko Furusho.
• Michio Ito: Pioneering Dance-Choreographer (2013), a film directed by Bonnie Oda Homsey for the Los Angeles Dance Foundation.
• Takeishi, Midori, ed. and rev. by David Pacun. Japanese Elements in Michio Ito’s Early Period (1915-1924): Meetings of East and West in the Collaborative Works, (Tokyo: Gendaitosho, 2006).
• Michio Ito's personal papers are located at the California Ethnic & Multicultural Archives, UC Santa Barbara Library, University of California, Santa Barbara.