The light streaming through the windows actually emphasizes the age of the room—illuminating the cracks on the walls, the worn floorboards, and the chipped pillars that hold up an old ceiling. Still, there's something magical about the Headland Center for the Arts in Marin, CA. A small crowd fills the wall of benches and overflows onto the floor. The crowd breaks into applause when June Watanabe enters the room. Her short hair is jet black, she has dark eyes, distinct features and the confident poise of a dancer. She's the type of woman who can make a simple gray tunic and wide-legged pants (which is what she's wearing tonight) look elegant. And most striking, when she starts dancing, you completely forget that she's 64 years old.

Her performance tonight, “Noh Project II,” is deeply personal and very ambitious. Her dance company is considered alternative—for the last 20 years she's infused traditional choreography and techniques with abstract asthetic of modern dance. Watanabe is trying to give the strict, traditional elements of noh a modern spin. It's no easy task. Noh is Japan's oldest form of dance and devotees think it's fine as is. But finding where the disparity ends and similarities begin is exactly what excites Watanabe. As a Japanese American, she's wrestled with these issues all her life.

When she was young, her father also studied noh, but the rigid structure and formality of the art repelled her. "Everything he did was very Japanese and I hated all that. I really wanted to be American." As an undergraduate at UCLA, she was "a little bun-head [a ballerina] and I didn't like modern dance—it was very awkward and was going against the grain of ballet and formality. But by the time I graduated, I realized that human expression can be evoked through modern dance—it gave me a new way of thinking and feeling about movement. Modern dance is about having your own voice." And when she went to Japan as an adult, she began to understand her father's passion for noh. "I went to a noh performance and I found it to be so modern. It touched me very deeply—I really felt it in my body and in my cells."

The voice she’d developed through dance fell silent when, at age 40, degenerative arthritis in her spine put her in the hospital and doctors told she might never walk again. In this dark hour, she vowed that if she got a second chance, she would dance. "When I was in the hospital I cried for 11 days straight. I just died inside. That was a really strong awakening in me and immediately I decided that when I recovered I was going to dance." At age 41, she told her husband and three kids that she was quitting her job as a teacher at Mills College and starting her own dance company. At age 43, the company staged its first performance. Today, women might find inspiration in Oprah, who urges us to investigate who we really are so we can live life in the best way possible. Twenty years ago, Watanabe's decision to dance was met with surprise. Her mother told her she was neglecting her family, and her son said he wished she could be a “normal mom.” "I told my husband, I'm sorry but I can't help it. I have to dance. I need it like breathing." Fortunately he understood and confessed he envied her passion.

In the years since, she has traveled to Japan on a grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, received an Isadora Duncan Dance Award for individual performance, and has won over fans and critics—all the while continuing to raise her family. She has seen all of her children graduate from college, establish themselves in their own careers, and start their own families. And while she has slowed down (after all, she does need time to be a grandma) she will not quit. Tonight, she is previewing her latest work in anticipation for her May 2004 show at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.

In all her performances, the audience is acutely aware of time, perhaps because she started her career so late. Another common theme is the exploration of her past. World War II began when Watanabe was three years old, and she was sent with her family from their Los Angeles home to an internment camp in Heart Mountain, Wyoming. Her dance company has staged six performances inspired by her internment. "When I started dancing again, the internment thing started coming out. I kept doing this thing; I kept dripping myself onto the floor and I kept having these images of barbed wire and the watchtower. And I was thinking I needed to go with it. I really felt like I connected with being a Japanese American."

Because there are so few Japanese American dancers, she's wanted her performances to be political. "But I can only work within my own asthetic, which is usually more poetic." Indeed, her performances are often mystical and meditative. In her current noh-inspired piece, she emphasizes the tradition of ghosts or spirits visiting us from the past, coming to help rectify the turmoil, a particular death, or wrongdoing that the soul suffers. For Watanabe, it's a necessity that her art brings out our humanity, pushes boundaries and inspires our imaginations.

These days, her kids are extremely proud of their unconventional mother. Tonight her daughter is doing crowd control, directing the diverse group of white, Asian, black and Hispanic aficionados to their seats. Perhaps the best measure of how far Watanabe has come: some 50 years ago, this aging building which sits on the green headlands overlooking the Pacific was used to keep the Japanese out. Tonight this building is alive from the dancing of one courageous Japanese American woman.

Lora Ma-Fukuda has written for BabyCenter, Time Inc. Interactive, and Health magazine. She lives in San Francisco.