Maihime- Dancer — 舞姫

A dancing woman — "Maihime," the dancer — performs in this composition that bears the Japanese title "舞姫," connecting it to Mori Ogai's celebrated 1890 story of the same name about a Japanese student in Germany who falls in love with a German dancing girl. The Maihime figure in Yumeji's hands becomes a synthesis of Japanese and Western romantic ideals: a woman who moves, who expresses feeling through physical performance, and who exists at the intersection of art and desire. The dancing posture gives the figure a kinetic quality unusual in the typically still Yumeji bijin.