Isn't It Always The Way?

You're standing on stage at the Regent, about to try on a centuries-old Noh mask held by a Japanese Cultural Treasure, and it's only then that you realise that your boots are scruffy and your hair is mussed...

At least I was wearing my best stripy stockings.

Seriously, I went with Michael to the Noh Experience that was held last night. As this is the first time (according to the programme notes) that Noh Theatre has made it New Zealand, it was really quite historic. I think that IPC was sponsoring it, as were some other companies, whose names escape me.

What we saw were two solo dances excerpted from well-known plays, with a queston-and answer (and chance to try on the masks) in between. The dancer, Kyutaro Hashioka, was dressed in exceedingly bulky and beautifully made clothing, and moved very slowly. His only props were a fan and his hanging sleeves, which he moved in meaningful ways, most of which I didn't understand (I don't understand most of the body-language of ballet, either). Both of the dances we saw were god dances.

There were five musicians: two drummers, a flute-player, and three chanters. The drums were small and their skins were horse-hide, though the leather was from different parts of the horse. In consequence, one drum had to be warmed backstage to keep moisture from slackening the tone. They had distinct pitches and were played very simply - slow handslaps against the skin. They would have been nothing without each other to bounce the irregular rhythms off. The flute was small and very waily; I could hear breathiness at the start of the notes. Sometimes the chanters were singing altogether in harmony what sounded like bits of plot, or description perhaps. Even if I understood Japanese, I don't think I'd be able to decipher what they were singing, though. Sometimes they were acting as other insturments, supplying weird howls and other sound-effects in the same rhythm as the drums and flute.

The music was certainly different from the Western music that I am used to : the flute's long notes tended to sag in pitch, the harmony of the singers was strange, sounding very dissonant to my ears. (It sounds a bit like traditional Maori music. If that isn't a useful comparison, watch the first five minutes of Gangs of New York - the repetitive flute riff has a little of the same feeling.) It made a peculiar contrast to the formality of the dancer, the perfectly clean floor that he was supposed to dance on (ours was a little dusty, alas), the solemnity with which everyone moved - like, perhaps, straight clean garden walls with a tangled wilderness hidden inside.

In the workshop in-between the performances, Kyutaro Hashioka told us a little bit about Noh - that there were specific gestures in the dances, that Noh was 650 years old and hadn't changed since the beginning, that it was associated with religion, that his costumes and masks were all over a hundred years old. The eye-holes of the mask are set so that the dancer cannot easily look through them - the dancer effectively moves from memory. He also let members of the audience come up on stage and try on the masks :-) Well, he held the masks in front of our faces, anyway - they are so old and fragile that it's dangerous to handle them too much. (I said Doumo to him, after, and ever since have been afflicted with doubt - was that too informal? He seemed a very nice person, and I didn't want him to think I wasn't taking it seriously. Ah, the hell with it.)

I found Noh a little uncomfortable to listen to and watch, at first, but it grew on me. I would like to see a complete performance, sometime, and see how the plot unfolds. There is a science fiction story, "Rokuro" by Poul Anderson, that I believe to be based on a the Noh form - I have a better idea of how it should be read now.

It was a very memorable experience.