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Miyagawa-cho Kyoodori Apr 1 2019

Kata as convenient shortcuts to Japanese traditional performance culture  http://www.miyagawacho.jp/pdf/kyoodori_leaflet_2019.pdf The highly-codified dance forms, Kata, found throughout Japanese traditional dance and theatre, and even some modern theatre, are shortcuts. They are highly refined and defined, capable of infinite varieties of combinations, at a wide range of levels of energies and paces. They are pre-fabricated material ready to be enlisted to quickly and beautiful put up new creations, lego blocks of beauty and power. This was evident in the annual dances of teenage maiko and middle-age geisha in the Miyagawa-cho Kyo odori held April first in rainy, sakura-strewn Kyoto. The small strip of teahouses just east of the Kawabata Avenue south of Shijo in Kyoto is home to the Miyagawa-cho, one of the “Five Geisha Districts” that includes its more famous neighbor Gion. http://miyako-odori.jp/english/  The Miyako Odori is a pillar of Kyoto’s spring to...

The first 50 years

The Graduate In the Fall of 1977 I was considering my options after graduation. Having been gone the previous spring to London, I fell into senior year with the excitement of renewing acquaintances (and a fantastic corner dormsuite), but less lead-time to the end of College days than others. Suddenly everyone around me seemed to be talking a bewildering alphabet soup of tests: MBA, GRE, MCAT, etc… or interviewing at grown-up companies like Hewlett-Packard. Doing good in the world? Sure, but we want to get paid for it, seemed to be the general drift. I felt like the game I had been playing seriously for the last three years turned out to only a training camp for the Future, whereas I thought it was the aim itself. Then I became aware of a program that appealed to my instincts to wander the world, see lots of art and music and theatre, and hone my craft as theatre critic and director. The Watson Fellowship allows undergraduates at select colleges to wander the world with a blank check,...