Announcement - Yayoi Hirano " Okuni - Mother of Kabuki"
YAYOI Theatre Movement Society (YTMS) creates a unique blending of traditional Japanese dance and theatre performance including mask theatre with modern narratives. They provide traditional training plus the option for contemporary collaboration and fusing traditional arts with other artistic disciplines and dance forms.
Yayoi Hirano graduated at Toho Gakuen College of drama in 1972. In 1975 she co-founded mime theatre Pierrot-kan to popularize pantomime in Japan through modern works. In 1989, she became the first mime artist to receive the Japanese Ministry of Education Fellowship, and spent a year studying mime with Milan Sladek in Germany and dance with Maria Formolo and clowning Jan Henderson in Canada. (Milan Sladek was guest at It’s Mime Time! in the last season). In 1990 she founded the YAYOI Theatre Movement in Tokyo and moved to Vancouver in 2002.
Over the past 30 years she has continued her study of Japanese dance and movement such as Kagura, Noh, Kyogen, Kabuki-dance as well as western dance both classic ballet and modern dance. Her mime study has been in both Decroux and Lecoq systems.
Sara Davis Buechner (Piano) works as concert pianist and educator. She toured with the Mark Morris Dance Group, and worked as an innovative collaborator with silent films. She won various prestigious awards such as gold medal of the 1984 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition and was top American prizewinner of the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow. Ms. Buechner is currently Associate Professor, Piano at UBC.
We look forward to presenting this Friday a special broadcast: “Okuni - the Mother of Kabuki” with and by the YAYOI Theatre Movement.
Okuni was a nun in Izumo in the last quarter of the 16thC. She came to Kyoto and became famous as the creator and lead performer of Kabuki Theatre. Kabuki is one of the two major traditional Japanese theatre styles (the other one is Nho theatre). She practiced her arts for a number of years under the Samurai (warrior government) culture, then in full power. In that days the political power was mainly held by the Samurai, the warrior cast. The English and Dutch were importing guns to Japan causing a period of violence, especially in the Osaka area. The Samurai were brutal, killing all - male, female, young or old. Many were lost, children kidnapped, couples separated by the fighting - no one knows how many. Perhaps this is why Okuni disappeared in 1615 – to escape such brutality. No further reference has been found about her. After 1615 the Shogun, the leader of the Samurai, closed all ports but one to foreigners to reduce Western influence on Japanese affairs. Okuni is still revered today as an artistic treasure in Japan.
Okuni – Mother of Kabuki is an original Physical Theatre creation by Ms. Hirano celebrating this great artist.
If you like it, share it!
Yayoi Hirano graduated at Toho Gakuen College of drama in 1972. In 1975 she co-founded mime theatre Pierrot-kan to popularize pantomime in Japan through modern works. In 1989, she became the first mime artist to receive the Japanese Ministry of Education Fellowship, and spent a year studying mime with Milan Sladek in Germany and dance with Maria Formolo and clowning Jan Henderson in Canada. (Milan Sladek was guest at It’s Mime Time! in the last season). In 1990 she founded the YAYOI Theatre Movement in Tokyo and moved to Vancouver in 2002.
Over the past 30 years she has continued her study of Japanese dance and movement such as Kagura, Noh, Kyogen, Kabuki-dance as well as western dance both classic ballet and modern dance. Her mime study has been in both Decroux and Lecoq systems.
Sara Davis Buechner (Piano) works as concert pianist and educator. She toured with the Mark Morris Dance Group, and worked as an innovative collaborator with silent films. She won various prestigious awards such as gold medal of the 1984 Gina Bachauer International Piano Competition and was top American prizewinner of the 1986 Tchaikovsky International Piano Competition in Moscow. Ms. Buechner is currently Associate Professor, Piano at UBC.
We look forward to presenting this Friday a special broadcast: “Okuni - the Mother of Kabuki” with and by the YAYOI Theatre Movement.
Okuni was a nun in Izumo in the last quarter of the 16thC. She came to Kyoto and became famous as the creator and lead performer of Kabuki Theatre. Kabuki is one of the two major traditional Japanese theatre styles (the other one is Nho theatre). She practiced her arts for a number of years under the Samurai (warrior government) culture, then in full power. In that days the political power was mainly held by the Samurai, the warrior cast. The English and Dutch were importing guns to Japan causing a period of violence, especially in the Osaka area. The Samurai were brutal, killing all - male, female, young or old. Many were lost, children kidnapped, couples separated by the fighting - no one knows how many. Perhaps this is why Okuni disappeared in 1615 – to escape such brutality. No further reference has been found about her. After 1615 the Shogun, the leader of the Samurai, closed all ports but one to foreigners to reduce Western influence on Japanese affairs. Okuni is still revered today as an artistic treasure in Japan.
Okuni – Mother of Kabuki is an original Physical Theatre creation by Ms. Hirano celebrating this great artist.
If you like it, share it!
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