#kabuki dance

[epitaphys]

Kyojuro Rengoku performing the “Renjishi” kabuki dance🦁🔥

Reference below 👇

[lissasunnyart]

Just found one of my old drawings. So I can see the changes in my drawing style. 🤔

Reference

[derpyfins]

SIAC Virtual Performance Series

Hi everyone,

If you’re at all interested in Japanese Kabuki Dance, my Sensei, Sachiyo Ito, is streaming some highlights from past performances shortly (June 25 at 6pm ET.)  She is in the Fujima School, the same school of Gion Higashi in Kyoto.

You can watch on Youtube HERE

More info on the excerpts to be shown can be found in the link.

[asakusasisters]

~RED MIRROR LION from REVUE JAPAN~

Male impersonator Kazuki Tsubasa from all-female theatre OSK REVUE, show “REVUE JAPAN” 2018.

[sunkentreasurecove]

[arelativenewcomer]

Fujimusume, or the Wisteria Maiden is a kabuki dance sequence. There is no particular plot, as the music and the dance describe the feelings of a young enamoured maiden, who is in fact a spirit of the wisteria. The dance is divided in sequences performed in different kimonos which are a multi-coloured variation on the theme of wisteria pattern. The costume changes are done behind the large painted trunk of a pine tree which traditionally serves as the background for the performance.

In the sequence, various objects handled skilfully by the actor become other everyday items: a ribbon of the lacquered hat is a brush with which the maiden writes her love letter; long sleeves of the kimono become clusters of wisteria flowers, a bottle of sake, a cup; a fan, besides serving its original purpose, represents a sliding door or another cup. The actor’s skills and the spectators’ imagination work together to paint a lively and pleasant picture.  

For more on the dance and its history, see [here]. You can watch it on YouTube [Part 1; Part 2] with English commentary, or on Youku [here] without it.

Photos, top to bottom, left to right: Bandō Tamasaburō in the Wisteria Maiden, first section [source]; Bandō Tamasaburō as Wisteria Maiden, after the second change of costume [source]; Bandō Tamasaburō and Nakamura Shichinosuke performing the Wisteria Maiden [source]; behind the scenes: Tamasaburō and Shichinosuke during the performance [source]; first and second from the right: purple and orange-green wisteria kimono used during the performance [source]; orange-green wisteria kimono used during the performance (after the first change of costume) [source].

[arelativenewcomer]

Well then, if Sagi musume was the first kabuki dance performance that left me speechless, Orochi was the one with which my interest had begun. The dance (which you can watch here [1], here [2], and here [3]) tells a story of a monstrous eight-headed serpent that menaced the inhabitants of the Izumo province. Yamata no Orochi was slain by Susanoo, the brother of the Sun goddess Amaterasu. Inside the dead creature’s tail, Susanoo discovered a sword which he handed over to Amaterasu, who, in turn, established it as one of the three sacred imperial regalia of Japan (the so-called Herb-Quelling Great Sword). 

Among the various interpretations of what might have happened with the sword (allegedly kept until the present day at the Atsuta Shrine), the one presented in Heike monogatari is of special interest. Here, the sword is said to have been lost in the sea, when, seeing the defeat of the Heike clan, the grandmother of the child Emperor Antoku thrust herself into the sea, taking Antoku and two of the three regalia with her. In the eleventh book of Heike monogatari the following interpretation of the loss is given: ‘“The great serpent that once had been killed and cut into pieces by the august Susanoo on the bank of Hi-no-kawa in the province of Izumo, in his deep embitterment due to the loss of the miraculous sword, just like his eight heads and eight tails had presaged, after eighty reigns of human sovereigns, assumed the shape of an eight-year-old Emperor and retrieved the miraculous sword to cast himself with it into the depth of the seas!”, said he [a master of divination]. And since at the bottom of the sea of thousand fathoms the sword had thus become treasure of a divine dragon, one finds that it was never restituted to the world of humans’ (Heike monogatari, Book 11; based on the French translation of René Sieffert, Le dit des Heiké, Éditions Verdier 2012).

A kabuki play, Nihon furisode hajime, is based on the tale of Orochi and the princess Inada, sacrificed to the serpent and finally saved by the victorious Susanoo. Here, Orochi is a spirit of a jealous woman who has turned into a demon, and it is Inada who finds the sword and uses it to cut herself free from Orochi’s belly (for the summary of the play, see here).

The kabuki dance in question is performed with one quick change of costume (here done behind one of the large jars on stage) from the crimson red kimono to one adorned with golden-black uroko pattern, made up of triangles representing scales of a dragon or snake. While the crimson kimono is the costume of both Inada and Orochi in the beginning section—as the actor assumes here both roles, initially indicating the change of the character only by his movements—the uroko kimono reveals the true nature of the creature in the latter section of the dance.

What I actually learned (and learned to love) from this piece is that kabuki is about the detail. It is amazing to see how the costume change (kimono in the first place, but do note the lack of the elaborate headdress which immediately renders the character more rough!) transforms the person on stage into a completely different figure. In every form of theatre costume and props are important, but kabuki has developed its own special way of making people and things—not only things as wholes, but also particular features of things, such as colour, texture, and geometry—actually collaborate. Things without people are lifeless; but things also determine the context, the character, the mood—everything that builds the character. To allow oneself to be thus determined by objects, yet still not be objectified is at the same time an act of humility and expression of mastery. 

Pictures: Bandō Tamasaburō in Orochi kabuki dance (crimson kimono: beginning section; uroko kimono: middle and final section; source); Gozu Tennō (= Susanoo) killing Orochi (ukiyo-e woodblock print by Utagawa Kuniteru; source).

[maestitiaparva]

Japanese trascedentalism. Kabuki Dance   歌舞伎 /  女形 Onnagata -female form-  Male kabuki actors who specialize in playing female roles. All actors in kabuki dance are male.  Edo period.  About Yamanba here, (Old woman of the mountains)