NEWS
Saturday, 2nd April 2022 - 16:30 - Concert "Resonance: the music and the gesture"
Musée des Beaux-Art de Nîmes,France
(Art-Museum Nîmes, France)
The symbolical gesture of the Japanese tradition meets the old European music. The gestures of Kabuki dance meet the symbolical themes of occident. Now the sceneries are showed up where the subtle emotions articulate the universal language of signs and sounds…
by Hypothesis, music and dance
Leopoldo d’Agostino, recorder, music research
Cinzia Zotti, Viola da Gamba, text research
Eiko Hayashi, traditional Japanese dance (Kabuki – Nihon Buyô)
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NEA – Noblesse & Excellence de l'Asne
"L'Orient et l'Occident : la musique de l'esprit et la danse de l’âme
Si l'esprit et l'harmonie du cosmos sont au coeur de la
culture occidentale du 17es., les mouvements de l’âme
et la beauté sont également au centre de la tradition
culturelle du Japon. Ainsi le geste et la musique se
rencontrent sur une conception esthétique que
l'Orient et l'Occident partagent à un certain moment de
leurs histoires respectives et qui ne manque pas
d'actualité. Dans les deux cultures, par des moyens
différents d'expression, la beauté devient source du
sentiment capable de transporter l’âme et le corps
dans une dimension qui dépasse le temps et l'espace.
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Le geste artistique est alors comparé à la « fleur qui
éclot à chaque pas de danse », à chaque vibration
des sons, avant de se flétrir tout aussi vite. C'est par
la contemplation de cet instant fugace, débordant de
vie, que l'imaginaire s'ouvre à une dimension
atemporelle.
En Europe au 17e et 18e siècles, la musique sans mots
et la musique de danse s'habillent de valeurs
symboliques précises, tout comme les narrations,
illustrées par les gestes mesurés de la danse Kabuki,
renvoient aux sentiments, aux paysages, à des
images abstraites. Et le mouvement se fait langage,
un langage universel qui, comme la musique, ne
nécessite pas de traduction.
Cinzia Zotti d’Agostino"
December 2021
KOKORO
Heart (Kokoro) as the spring of the dance (Eiko Hayashi)
The essence of beauty seems for me to be the same or similar in the West and the East, if it is related to tradition or modern. It is the spring of the aesthetical feeling, which –in a wider sense - makes our body and soul fly into another sphere than the everyday life.
The Japanese dramatist, (1363 – 1443) Zeami, so to speak a Japanese Shakespeare, called this spiritual energy of aesthetic, the source of the beauty, flowers. Especially in the art of dance, these flowers burst into full bloom in every second and fade away also in the twinkling of an eye.
Just in this ephemeral light arrow of the energy of life, the spectator of the dance feels himself touched in the depth of his heart. Seen from this point of view, the heart can be visualized through the dance movements. In Japan this feeling to be touched in the heart is metaphorically expressed like “the strings of the Koto (instrument)” are touched and bring sonority. And heart (kokoro) in this context can be understood as soul.
Another importing feature of the Kabuki Dance is the story telling characteristic with the body movements. Whether it is a matter of historical episodes, Japanese myths, a moment occurrence of an everyday life, a moral portrait, landscapes, or even an abstract feeling, everything is expressed with the Kabuki dance vocabulary, based on the more than 400 hundred years of tradition.
Nowadays, stories from all over the world with music from another culture can be choreographed through the Kabuki dance movements. Also, these Japanese traditional movements can be combined with other different dance styles. Like this on the stage, a wonderful and exotic new flower comes into bloom from tradition and modern, from the East and the West.