Kyoto performance reviews

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...

Cinema Kabuki: Rakuda/Renjishi The idea is a great one: to capture on HD video the excitement of live performance, then broadcast it in surrond-sound multiplex theatres around the country. The Metropolitan Opera continues its Met Live series, which include backstage interviews, shots of actors in close-up, and (in delayed broadcasts abroad) subtitled versions and (in DVDs released later) bonus track. But when it comes to Cinema Kabuki, something is not quite right. The curtain and chatty audience is captured just before opening, but after that there is no sense of the live spectators watching from varied angles around the auditorium (mind you, the three Met broadcasts I’ve seen similarly dismiss the audience as necessary clutter—or perhaps there are legal issues of including so many “extras”?). Kakegoe claque calls come from the “back”, while sporadic oohs, ahs, and laughter are heard. But except for the infrequent shots of the hanamichi (and adjoining patrons), the spectators themselv...