"The Six Poet Immortals" ・ Rokkasen Sugata no Irodori EXPLAINED (1831)
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- Опубліковано 6 вер 2024
- Rokkasen Sugata no Irodori, first performed in 1831, is a monumental 100-minutes-long masterpiece of kabuki dance. In this video, we explore the basic elements of its structure and styles, give some context to its place in the hengemono genre of transformation dances, and briefly allude to some of the most important performers of the dance.
This video originated as a love letter to the wonderful performances of Mitsugorō X and his grandfather, Mitsugorō VIII, in 2009 and 1969 respectively. I hope to go back to this dance in the near future and flesh out some of the beautifully unique aspects of their approaches to the dance, as well as some other variations in costumes and staging throughout the XX century.
Special thanks to Paul M. Griffith for his translation (used here for the brief Narihira excerpt at the end) and always insightful commentary. You can find his complete translation of Rokkasen in "Kabuki Plays on Stage Vol 3: Darkness and Desire, 1804-1864".
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And if you have any question, correction or suggestion, you can contact us at: in.praise.of.shadows.kabuki@gmail.com
#kabuki #japan #dance
Your story telling and editing are so excellent! The way you put the new and old versions of that last dance together was masterful!
Thank you very much for such a kind words!
@@KabukiInDepth I just came back to watch it again!
i'd love to see a version with all the costume changes recorded one day
I like how it belnds comedy and the heian period in the setting of the capital
Well done, David. Great job, and beautifully edited.
Glad you enjoyed it!
Beautiful piece, thanks so much!
I've seen Matsumoto Koshiro performing Kisen, and he was able to pull of Date no Juuyaku, so I'm guessing he'd be able to perform all five roles. Ichikawa Ennosuke is a decent dancer too so I wonder if he'd attempt this.
I would love to watch those two attempt the whole dance! But I suppose many things go into an actor performing the complete dance (scheduling, time constraints, interest...). In some sense, Mitsugorō X and Kanzaburō XVIII were the last actors of male roles to dedicate such an important part of their kabuki careers to dance. I hope many more do the same in the future. Ennosuke IV has surely worked hard reviving his family collection of dances (the En'ō Jūshu).
where can you find the 2009 performances? I cannot find it anywhere. I REALLY wants to see full of them!
That was fantastic. I was wondering, though, if there is somewhere I can find the written dialogue for these kabuki plays? I’ve heard that the Japanese style for the dialogue is hard even for modern Japanese people to understand. I would like to look at the way, they structure the dialogue traditionally, and see how it differs from modern Japanese.
As far as I know there are no kabuki scripts available online, although you might find some excerpts here and there. Published editions try their best to adapt the texts to a modern format (spelling, choice of kanji, furigana...), but it still can be tricky for the regular reader.
I uploaded the script for this particular dance a while back to Patreon: www.patreon.com/posts/some-materials-62315508 The music and dialogue are in the second row of the first article, just above the photographs.
@@KabukiInDepth thank you so much!
@@KabukiInDepth thanks very much! Are there any videos with Japanese subtitles though? Even if it's not written as it would have been originally, it would still help me make out the words of the very stylized performance.
The NHK used to air kabuki on TV with a Japanese subtitles option, and several of these were uploaded to UA-cam over the years. If you search by the play's Japanese titles you might be able to find some of them. If you can't find any let me know and I'll look for it. I know I have at least a couple of scenes somewhere. It would be nice, by the way, if they added Japanese subtitles to the Kabuki On Demand service, but so far they haven't.
@@KabukiInDepth oh, yeah, for sure! Having the option for both Japanese subtitles, and English subtitles would be great for learning. Thanks very much