The prima ballerina still going strong after 75 years

TOKYO—Yoko Morishita was 3 years old when she first put on a pair of ballet shoes.

Seventy-five years later, she’s still en pointe.

Morishita, who will turn 78 in December, is the prima ballerina in Japan’s storied Matsuyama Ballet Company. One of Japan’s most-celebrated dancers, she performed with Rudolf Nureyev 200 times and toured with Margot Fonteyn.

Today, she is the world’s oldest ballerina still taking on demanding lead roles. In January, she starred as Odette and the black swan Odile in “Swan Lake” and in May she performed “Coppelia.” She is currently rehearsing for her role as Clara in “The Nutcracker” in November, a part she has played for 45 years.

Being the principal dancer of a renowned ballet company would be taxing for a dancer half her age. Few ballet stars make it past 40 before hanging up their pumps and switching to teaching, overcome by the immense physical, mental and artistic demands of the art form.

In an interview at Matsuyama’s Tokyo studio, her legs swathed in pink woolen socks to keep them warm, Morishita said her secret is simple: She lives for ballet and rarely thinks beyond the next day’s rehearsal or performance.

“Once today is over, I think about tomorrow’s lesson,” she said. “Before I knew it, 75 years had passed.”

Postwar providence

Morishita was born in Hiroshima in 1948, three years after the city was obliterated by an atomic bomb. Its inhabitants were rebuilding but the scars remained: Her grandmother survived the blast but with terrible injuries.

Morishita said the resilience of her family, friends and neighbors in the aftermath of the bombing was an inspiration that still drives her today.

“Everyone was full of energy and courage, and they were living their lives with an incredible sense of gratitude for being alive,” she said.

Morishita was a frail child. A doctor told her parents she needed more physical exercise. A kindergarten across the street from the family home held ballet classes after the regular school day finished.

“If it had been a gymnastics class instead, my life would have been completely different,” Morishita said. “The God of Ballet was telling me: ‘You’re meant to do ballet.’ ”

Her first teacher, Kiyoshi Hamuro, saw the potential in his tiny charge. He enrolled Morishita with a strict and formidable ballet mistress called Michiko Suwa.

Suwa would sometimes strike her pupils’ feet with the handle of a hataki, a Japanese feather duster, whenever they buckled from the pain of standing en pointe too long. Today such a teacher would face a lawsuit. Back then, “parents would just keep quiet and apply ointment to our wounds,” Morishita said.

Suwa nevertheless instilled in the fledgling ballerina a discipline and rigor that would carry Morishita through her career. She gave her first ballet performance at 6 on the tiny stage in front of the screen in a Hiroshima movie theater. At 12, she persuaded her parents to send her to ballet school in Tokyo.

She joined the Matsuyama Ballet Company in 1971 after stints studying ballet overseas, including in the U.S. Morishita recalls having been electrified by a performance she had seen by Mikiko Matsuyama, who founded the company in 1948.

“At that moment, I thought, ‘This is the one, this is the teacher,’ ” she said.

Morishita’s career would take her all over the world, dazzling audiences in New York, Shanghai, Paris and London. She performed with Nureyev for Queen Elizabeth II. A personal highlight was dancing alongside her idol, Margot Fonteyn, who she had first seen perform as a wide-eyed 20-year-old in New York.

“Just seeing her come out on stage—it was as if everything suddenly lit up. I still remember it to this day,” she said.

Yukihiko Yoshida, a longtime dance critic in Japan, said Morishita developed a delicate way of dancing that is uniquely Japanese. Her longevity, he said, is reminiscent of performers of traditional Japanese arts, such as Noh and Kabuki, who spend decades mastering their craft.

“Ms. Morishita is a legend of the Japanese ballet world for sure. Everyone is wondering when her retirement performance will be,” Yoshida said.

Practice makes perfect

Ballet at the elite level is physically demanding. Rick Seah, a doctor who treats athletes and dancers at the U.K.’s Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital, said ballet dancers need strength and endurance in their muscles and ligaments to reach and maintain many complex positions. Lower limb injuries including sprains, bone damage and wear and tear of the tendons are common, he said.

Seah said it is rare to see ballet dancers performing at 77. “It is a testament to how she looks after herself to achieve some longevity in her career,” he said.

Morishita practices for at least six hours, six days a week, and still makes time for stretching on her day off. She said her commitment to practicing springs from childhood clumsiness—it always took her longer to grasp new movements and techniques than some of her peers.

She credits that daily routine with keeping her dancing. She watches her step, especially in the rain, to guard against injury. Aside from following the Hiroshima Toyo Carp baseball team, she has few hobbies outside ballet. She said there are few foods she dislikes but she is especially fond of steak. Her parents, who weren’t artistic but were hugely encouraging of her ballet aspirations, ran a steakhouse in Hiroshima. “I have to eat meat,” she said.

Another factor in her long career is the love and support she gets from her Matsuyama colleagues, she said. Her husband, Tetsutaro Shimizu, is the ballet company’s executive director and choreographer. Dancing together in 1974, she won the Gold Prize at the Varna International Ballet Competition, the first time a Japanese dancer had won one of ballet’s most prestigious awards.

Energetic and playful, Shimizu likes to tease Morishita about her height. Dancers from New York, London or Paris have “such long legs,” Shimizu said, in contrast to the 4-foot-9-inch Morishita. Still, he said, “when she dances, she looks so big. That’s her strength. Something just bursts out of her, doesn’t it? I think that’s why everyone is drawn to her.”

Write to Jason Douglas at [email protected] and Junko Fukutome at [email protected]