Unearthing the History of Yeichi Nimura with Newly Digitized Rare Photos
NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 58735647
Rare photographs of Yeichi Nimura from the Jerome Robbins Dance Division have recently been digitized and uploaded to NYPL's Digital Collections, accessible to all anywhere in the world. Nimura is also one of many dance figures illuminated in our exhibition, Border Crossings: Exile and American Modern Dance, 1900-1955. Like others in the exhibition, Nimura’s history of migration and hardship influenced modern dance.
Dancer, teacher, and choreographer, Nimura was born Tomizo Miki on March 25, 1897, in Suwa, Japan, the sixteenth generation of a Samurai family. His father, a retired Commissioner of Police, died when Nimura was six, and he never knew or heard mention of his mother. Nimura would always remember his father's severe child-rearing methods and the succor of the Japanese rituals they observed together. His grandfather, a respected Suwa patriarch, was a similarly exacting influence who exposed Nimura to martial arts and other Japanese traditions.
After leaving Japan when his father and grandfather died, and his family’s fortune collapsed, he arrived in New York City in 1920, and began studying ballet. A chance attendance at a Denishawn Company recital in 1924 led to intensive training at the Denishawn School, primarily ballet with Katherine Edson. Edson encouraged Nimura to dance professionally. In 1925, he studied only briefly with Michio Ito, but Nimura's talent was evident and Ito hired him to perform two musical numbers in the 1927 revue Chingaling.
Yeichi Nimura and female dancer in unidentified work, 1930-32.
NYPL Digital Collections, Image ID: 58735637
During the 1930s he toured Europe and the United States extensively, with Lisan Kay as his partner. With the cessation of touring because of the war, Nimura established himself as a prolific dancer, choreographer, and teacher. He founded the Ballet Arts School in 1940, renting Denishawn’s old studio in Carnegie Hall. The studio became a central feature of the New York dance scene: Nimura hired a wide range of important artists to teach there, and many distinguished dancers trained at the school. At the height of his career, Nimua had his own studio and school and dancers Gemze De Lappe and NYCB principal Diana Adams were among his students.
John Martin, in The New York Times, praised Nimura's abilities as a dancer: "His is a purely spectacular art; he has strength, precision, sharpness of attack, agility, and that most important of stage qualifications, the ability to command attention every moment."
Nimura choreographed many works including one called Cat Wizard and also made work for Broadway and the opera. Although he died in the U.S., his ashes were returned to his birthplace of Suwa, Japan. Over the last decade, that city has worked closely with the Jerome Robbins Dance Division to surface his contributions in Japan. In 2019 the city published a book in his honor with materials from the Division’s collection.
Explore more photographs from this recently digitized collection of images belonging to the Yeichi Nimura and Lisan Kay Nimura papers preserved by the Jerome Robbins Dance Division.