In days past, when Japanese didn’t have TV, people’s favorite pastime was village festivals at which they sung and danced. They were not professional performers, but trained themselves very hard in order to entertain their family, friends, visitors, gods and their ancestors. Their performance was appreciation and pray as well as entertaining. And when they performed really well, they could create beautiful harmony between performers, between performers and audience, and between performers and nature. Creating that kind of harmony which I call as “organic harmony” was one of the biggest joy of their life. And I’m trying to re-create organic harmony in our performance.
To devise musical and physical performance with organic harmony,
using Japanese folk dances and songs as catalysts.
My method for exploring
・documenting; what we experiment and realize in a rehearsal room
・filming; what we achieve so far
・collecting materials; images, sounds, papers and fabrics to be inspired
・analyse Japanese cultural heritage; techniques and discipline of Japanese traditional/ folk music and dance
・research other practitioners' methods; How do they create organic harmony in their performances? How do they create inter-cultural productions?
Preparation for performers
1, explain Japanese culture
According to Ruth Benedict’s book “The Chrysanthemum and the sward”, Japanese culture is culture of shame. Most of all Japanese characteristic movements are based on sense of shame.
i.e. When you walk, your feet are never lifted from the floor but slide along it
->Japanese people used to think that stamping feet is embarrassing because it makes noise.
2, relaxation
listening sutra chanting
3, vocal warm up
humming and breathing
4, physical warm up
Japanese walk: reduce the movement of the hips. You have to bend the knees and move the trunk as a single unit. By blocking the hips and preventing them from following the movements of the legs, two different levels of tension are created in the body: in the lower part (the legs which must move), and in the upper part (the trunk and the vertebral column, which is engaged by pushing on the hips).
5, Activating senses
humming and walking with your eyes closed: In Japan, performers are often told “you must see with a second pair of eyes” or “you have the eyes in front, the eyes of heart behind”. You are required to dilate their field of vision and to use your heart to see behind them.
composition and choreograph
Many great composers were accused of racism due to luck of respect oriental (non-western) culture. For instance, when Puccini composed “Madam Butterfly”, he just chopped up Japanese traditional music, copied it and added it to his own melody. These days, even Japanese young creators do the same thing as Puccini did and make something like Japanese.
To avoid being ‘Japanese-ish’, I did
-analyze characteristic motives and movements
-brake them apart
-reconstruct them
I also chose not to use Japanese language in my songs, in order to make my song as simple as possible and easy to remember for everyone.
Yin-dance
Based on Japanese traditional circle dance “Bon-odori” which is performed to celebrate and entertain their ancestors and dead people.
https://youtu.be/IbaXTONENMw?list=PLqQHdJdL0lOJOQhFMfb2DWNrp1MeU7lqa
characteristic motives/movement
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minor scale without 4th and 7th notes
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monotone rhythm
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fluidity
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sense of shame (i.e. revealing arms and legs are embarrassing)
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serene accord
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pigeon-toed
Yang-dance
Based on Soran-bushi: Japanese sea shanty that is said to have been first sung by the fishermen of Hokkaidō, northern Japan.
https://youtu.be/5zISAFJydBg?list=PLqQHdJdL0lOJOQhFMfb2DWNrp1MeU7lqa
characteristic motives/movement
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major scale without 7th note
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less than 1 octave
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strong chest voice
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lots of “ya” “r” “s” sounds
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melodic/slower part + rhythmical/faster part
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movement of fishermen (i.e. hauling up the fishing net, raw a boat)
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underslung
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shift the weight back and forth
Fan-dance
based on Japanese folk dance “Awa-odori”
https://youtu.be/tKdEOqaQnyw?list=PLqQHdJdL0lOJOQhFMfb2DWNrp1MeU7lqa
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flip fans
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certain monotone rhythm of "Ohayashi" (music band)
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light chest voice
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simple chant which has no semantic meaning but encourages performers
Practice
Songs and choreograph which I made were based on Japanese folk music and dance, it means these are not familiar with my collaborators who are non-Japanese. However memorizing song and choreograph is not enough because my aim is not performing song and dance but creating organic harmony. I require my performers to practice until these become second nature.
I asked them to repeat the same part or phrase and
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try much quicker/slower speed
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record and check again and again
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watch each other and analyze each other
organic harmony in a rehearsal room
1, communication
-between practitioners: we talked about Colonialism, and realized that every country has a history of invention. Every modern society was created on the land which was taken away from native people. And colonizers were not totally stupid or vicious, they were just lack of respect other’s life and insensitive to other’s pain.
-between practitioners and practice: Shakespeare’s text brought us the story, the story added emotion to our practice, and emotion helped us to concentrate and enjoy our performance.
2, share
-creative ideas: i.e. theme, character analysis, scenography, dramaturg -> I made my idea book to share my ideas with collaborators
-political opinions: i.e. colonialism
-emotions: capturing and sharing other performers’ feeling seem the key to create organic harmony.
3, organic harmony between each dances
Story makes emotional shift which links each dances and songs.
4, organic harmony in the text of “The Tempest”
- organic harmony in Shakespeare’s words: i.e. rhythm
- organic harmony in “The Island”: native people in “The Island” are living with the nature of “The Island”.
- disharmony between Prospero and native people in “The Island”: it makes us to think about organic harmony.
Analyse Japanese traditional methods of theatre making
1, Jo-ha-kyu (noh, kabuki, bunraku)
In Japanese, the expression jo-ha-kyu describes the three phase. The first phase is determined by the opposition between one force which is increasing and another force which is resisting the development if the first (ha ‘to break’, ‘to interrupt’) is the moment when the resisting force is overcome until one arrives at the third phase (kyu, ’speed’), when the action culminates, releases all its power and suddenly stops as if meeting an obstacle, a new resistance. Jo-ha-kyu rhythmic phrase has not only to do with the actor’s or dancer’s actions, but is also part of all various levels of organization of the performance.
2, Tame (kabuki, buyo)
Tame defines the action of holding back, of retaining. It is the ability to keep energy in. To absorb into an action limited in space, the energy necessary to carry out a much larger action.
3, Energy in space and energy in time (noh)
There is a rule in not theatre that says the three-tenths of any action should happen in space and seven-tenths in time. For example, if you want to grasp this bottle, you engage just that energy which is necessary to carry out the action, but in noh, seven times more energy is engaged, not to carry out the action in space, but to hold it within the actor and retain it (energy in time).
4, Perform absence (kabuki, noh, bunraku, buyo)
Asian performers, which were originally presented outdoors, have made use of a great number of conventions which are commonly accepted by the spectators. In fact, the spectators accept the presence on stage of staff/perfromer who assist and facilitate the main performer’s action and also accept that the performer turns his back to them.
Asian performers are aware that they are seen even though they cannot see.
5, The use of kimono (traditional costume)
The kimono has a volume effect that considerably modifies the spectator’s perception in order to transform the proportions of the performers body. It also conceals the bending of the legs. The wide sleeves of kimono create contrasting proportions between the solemnity of the pyramidal form and the narrowness of the wrist.
As a director
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emphasis the ritual aspect of Japanese folk dance: to create the certain atmosphere of “The Island”
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employ costume and prop: to indicate roles of performers
As conclusion
From the first rehearsal to the last one, I’ve been struggling with arrangement and management of rehearsal schedule. Having rehearsals as I plan must be my biggest task for the future. However, my collaborators helped and inspired me in many aspects. I would like to say that we could achieve my aim “To devise musical and physical performance with organic harmony, using Japanese folk dances and songs as catalysts“. I will continue to devise our performance, tackling with difficulties, improving general skills of song and dance, and doing more research.