Yo-Yo Ma could have stayed home. He could have been sitting in front of the fire polishing his six Grammy awards, basking in the accolades which have compared his cello playing to that of famed virtuoso Mstislav Rostropovich. He could have been adding to his prolific recording repertoire, which now includes virtually every major composition for cello. He could, in short, have been content in the knowledge that he is a superstar--possibly the most gifted cellist of his generation.

But no. Yo-Yo Ma had to have a vision.

Bach for all. On film. A document of the struggle involved in artistic collaboration and the creative process leading to a performance. A demystifying guide for the masses.

Which is why in June of last year Ma was in Tokyo with Tamasaburo Bando, the leading proponent of the age-old rituals of kabuki, discussing the intricacies of Bach Suite No. 5.

Ma had chosen Tamasaburo as one of six artists from different disciplines with whom he would collaborate in a film series, Inspired by Bach. They would create, as producer-director Niv Fichman says, "a suite of films; a giant Bach Suite of six hour-long films." Fichman, who also produced the critically acclaimed "Thirty-two Short Films About Glenn Gould," saw it as an irresistible challenge. "I had a fascination . . . with the Japanese aesthetic, so I immediately grabbed that [Suite to direct] for myself."

Ma's other subjects for collaboration hailed from the past and the present, both animate and inanimate. One film segment would place Ma in a "virtual reality" setting based on renderings of never constructed buildings by the 18th-century Italian architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Another two-year project was to follow the process of making an urban "refuge," a garden in the center of Boston, inspired by Suite No. 1, where buskers and music students from the nearby conservatory would play. Not all Ma's overtures were as successful. After he penned an impassioned letter to director Jane Campion, he received a curt, two-line note from her agent: "Ms. Campion does not do TV." But Ma was unperturbed. By June of 1994, he had already finished shooting the Third Suite with dancer-choreographer Mark Morris, and he and Fichman were to arrive in Tokyo for the fifth suite production.

Fichman had decided to travel light, with no crew except Joost Dankelman, his director of photography. It was the cinematographer's equivalent to a voyage with a toothbrush and a change of undies: no burden from the baggage, but not much protection if it rains, either.

And rain it did. As the humidity foretold the inevitable June downpours, so ominous clouds gathered over the project itself. The schedule, however, had seemed reassuring in its black and white chronology of eight 12-hour days; in its blueprints of sets to construct. The Four Seasons Hotel was booked for documentary sequences as was a large Tokyo film studio for the actual performance. A whole crew was on standby.

But schedules don't have artistic temperaments. Kabuki superstars do. As the central character of the sycophantic world of kabuki, Tamasaburo was not accustomed to playing second fiddle. His own directorial debut was set to commence the very day after the shoot, and he had more than a few ideas he wished to share on the subject of film-making. "Tamasaburo was used to shaping his own work," says Fichman. "He felt that it was spinning out of control with the deadlines for shooting, and he wanted his creative input." The stand-off resulted in a stand-down and Ma had his collaborative struggle--though perhaps not in the form he envisioned.

Just in from Boston, Ma leapt straight into shuttle diplomacy between Tamasaburo's Chiba residence and the production base at the Four Seasons. Tamasaburo was eventually swayed by Ma's demonstration of earnestness and a compromise was reached: the documentary sequences in which they were to discuss the melding of their disparate artistic visions would be shot in June. The performance itself was rescheduled for November. "That's the whole idea of collaboration," says Ma. "As much as you strive to reach some degree of height, you know that you may sink. Ultimately we are dealing with the idea of trust between people."

Shooting began five days later, but the hiatus had created a backlog of footage to be shot and the result was an increased air of tension. The lighting director swore at his assistants, and the famed unflappability of Dankelman was tested to the limit as Tamasaburo insisted on filter previews for his skin tone.

The problems were resolved on the second day of shooting, at the Kabuki-za. The venerable theater was looking its best, bathed in warm film and stage lights, and Tamasaburo justifiably felt at home as he talked the camera through his early life as a performer. Ma listened enraptured until, suddenly, he reached into his pocket and produced a full collector's set of Tamasaburo telephone cards. "Just look at these," he blurted. "You're a huge star here. You're bigger than Madonna." Tamasaburo let out a howl and playfully lunged for the cards. The tension lessened, and the shooting continued successfully. "Tamasaburo demonstrated [that day]," says Fichman, "that he was totally on board."

There were yet other obstacles to overcome. On the set at the Four Seasons the next day, Tamasaburo, for all his mastery of his own medium, appeared baffled by the dictates of the Western form he was striving to interpret. Ma played motifs from the Allemande movement of the suite as they talked, and the kabuki dancer interpreted the notes with movement. Bach does have a beat, he discovered, but for one with an intuitive feel for the emotion, the beat was in the way.

In his loose-fitting black civvies and minimal make-up, Tamasaburo appeared vaguely vulnerable. It was clear that he had made a leap of faith and had come prepared to show an unprepared artistic nakedness. But now the artistic struggle had begun. Ma played, watched with his patented look of intense concentration, listened, reinterpreted. The two stood, sat again and agonized as the film rolled. The revelation for Tamasaburo was learning to express the emotion of the piece with the upper part of the body while maintaining the pulse with the lower. Ma immediately felt Tamasaburo's movement through his bow. The moment was the "root of inspiration, the root of creativity" that he sought for himself, the dancer and the audience. Tamasaburo was "inside the work."

"I can feel the rhythm in the base of my neck," Tamasaburo exulted. "For me, the pulse is inevitable, it is fate," Ma said, making exaggerated circles of the bow to accentuate the persistence of Bach's rhythm. By this stage even the tone-deaf lighting technician had developed an involuntary foot-tapping motion.

"That was quite a eureka moment," says director Fichman. "As a documentary film maker you seldom get to see the inner workings of the mind like that, because no one particularly enjoys showing themselves struggling."

Valuable footage was in the can and the mood was upbeat as the two parted, with the performance shooting slated for November. On the night of the wrap party, however, Ma sent apologies. The discreet chrysanthemum markings on the limousine that picked him up outside the hotel hinted at a slightly more exclusive venue. Tamasaburo was also absent, off working on his own film.

If we ever evolve into a classical MTV culture, Ma will be its undisputed host. He is personable, articulate, with boyishly handsome looks. Classical music needs a face-lift and Yo-Yo Ma has the face.

His talent is unquestioned. At the age of five, he was able to perform three of the Bach suites for solo cello at a public recital; his father, himself an accomplished violinist, had taught him two measures a day.

They were the first actual pieces Ma played and the last his father heard. "My father actually survived spiritually during the war by playing that music," says the cellist. "I think that connection was passed on to me." And though his father was a man not given to verbal expression, "we communicated through music; and that remains very precious to me."

He found himself once again in Tokyo in November, with the same crew, the same collaborator and a need to communicate. The setting was far from plush. The walls were gray and peeling, the surfaces worn. The synthetic reality served as a foil for Tamasaburo's kimono-clad entrance onto the set of cavernous Studio 13.

He was a man transformed. He was a woman down to a toe, gliding around with full kabuki make-up and an exquisitely choreographed air of disregard as he settled by Ma's side. "Yes," he purred with feminine pride. "I'm beautiful."

It was Tamasaburo's world. "What he does, perhaps, is out of synch with modern society," explains Ma. "He devotes his life to the spark of life in a performance."

The stage flickered under the glow of the light from hundreds of candles. Warmly lit screens hung in geometric patterns, evoking the vertical and horizontal shapes prevalent in kabuki. Tamasaburo softly padded to the edge of the stage, where he was enveloped by his entourage of eight, each trained to anticipate a Bando whim at 50 paces. He remained demurely in character as his shoulders and creative ego received a tender massage.

Ma prepared oranges for the flagging crew and ensured that each member had a bite. The second assistant to the assistant who held the clamps was more accustomed to receiving abuse than gestures of kindness from celebrities and meekly smiled his gratitude. For Ma, the humanistic intent applies in equal measure to life and art. "I call Ma the reluctant genius," says Richard Kipnis, producer, Japan. "Tamasaburo, dare I say, has airs to his genius."

One moment our reluctant genius was lying on his back joking with the interpreter, or strumming the Pink Panther theme on his 1712 Stradivarius; the next playing like a man possessed by Bach's very spirit.

Roll camera. Action. The notes rose and Tamasaburo uncoiled. Soon the discussions, the interviews, the "hemming and hawing," as Ma put it, made sense in the collaborative performance. Forgotten were Tamasaburo's troubled musings on the Bach pulse: for the rhythmic Gavotte movement, he actually made a virtue of the beat by wearing a drum and striking it with unbridled glee. In the poignant Sarabande, the kabuki master was at his tragic best. Then, in the Courante he was a whirl of movement, snapping with his fan before finishing "with a flash in his eyes," Ma recalls. "That was frightening, as it should be. That was an amazingly dramatic moment."

But perhaps the crowning moment of the performance came during the Gavotte, when Tamasaburo tenderly lifted the cello from Ma, fading to a haze behind a screen, prizing his treasure.

"That was goosebump material," says Ma. "It was a very spiritual moment. By taking away the instrument--which is my voice--he established contact with that part of me."

For whatever reluctance Tamasaburo has displayed, for all the controlled obsession which appears to be an occupational hazard of kabuki stardom, in the performance, where it counts for him most, he displayed a touchingly selfless desire for intimacy with Ma's world. "Tamasaburo has become the dream where he hopes Yo-Yo's father will be," says Kipnis.

If, as Ma says, Bach used motific devices with specific meanings attached to tell a story, then here too, perhaps, a story has emerged. A love triangle of sorts. A tale of inner conflict and of reconciliation. The arts are loaded with tales of personal and historical baggage. The art, Ma believes, is finding "a commonality." When push comes to shove, Ma says, "It takes two to tango."