- S – Sahomi Tachibana
- SM – Shirley Muramoto
- S
- And that’s where I met him. It was one of the studios in Carnegie Hall. And he’d just come back from Japan as a G.I., and of course, he was interested in Japanese culture. So he met a lot of people in Japan who were dancers also, but they were modern dancers! Then when he came back and he saw me, it was ballet, so he got interested, and so we started dating, of course. 62 years, already!
- SM
- Wow! Did you ever dance together?
- S
- At the very, very beginning, I guess even before we were married, I taught him a Japanese dance. And then we used to have these programs at the Buddhist temple. They used to put on a little stage. And in those days, it was 1947… when I went there in ’47, ’48, they were still in a tenement house, this temple, Buddhist altar and all that. There were still a lot of Japanese, Japanese, you know, Issei’s, and they still wanted something Japanese, of course. So they put out this little stage in the basement, they put up chairs, and they put on Japanese plays, as well. There’s somebody who was able to put on Japanese plays, not the kabuki plays. It was mainly the modern Japanese plays. And then they also wanted some Japanese dance, and I was there, and so I remember choreographing something for Frank and myself, and we did something together.