Geimaru-za is an ensemble dedicated to nihon buyo, or traditional Japanese dance, an ancient offshoot of kabuki dance drama. Like kabuki, nihon buyo incorporates vivid narrative, colorfully costumed performers, and live music. These dances have been refined through the ages into simple and elegant narratives: in one dance, a puppeteer helps a marionette after it gets tangled in its own strings; in another, a poet saves both a plum tree and the nightingale that lives in its branches.

The five dynamic young dancers of Geimaru-za trained in the Department of Traditional Japanese Music at Tokyo’s prestigious University of the Arts; they appear at Duke Performances as part of their first-ever tour of the United States. Performing with eight live musicians, including shamisen (a three-stringed lute), fue (flute), and a resounding percussion section of taiko, o-tsuzumi, and ko-tsuzumi, the consummate artists of Geimaru-za offer an authentic performance of a distinctly Japanese dance tradition made vital and new.