Word: bugaku
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...career was based on that fundamental dance vocabulary, but he stretched it, opened up its gestures, added more jumps and turns, and gave it a startling new speed, clarity and sharpness of attack. He thought nothing of blending it with highland reels (Scotch Symphony, 1952) or stylized Japanese movements (Bugaku, 1963) or whatever other genre took his fancy...
...diverse and mysterious as those of a master politician-which he resembles far more than a plumber. He frequently jets off to foreign cities to negotiate future engagements for the company, and returns brimming with enthusiasm for the music and dance of newly visited lands. Balanchine's Bugaku (1963) was inspired in part by Kirstein's infatuation with Japanese culture...
...music is fragmented and ethereal, with no hint of sensuality in rhythm or dynamics. The dance, though, is something else again. The lovers stalk each other with expressionless hunger, and the postures they strike between movements are clear imitations of love. Balanchine did not intend to copy the traditional Bugaku, in which only men appear, but those who are misled by the borrowed title are likely to think that if such goings on are traditional in the Imperial Household, never mind the Ginza, get up to the palace...
...Spirit. Mayuzumi, 34, has already written some highly admired symphonic music (The Nirvana Symphony, Bacchanale) and some chamber work, but Bugaku is his first ballet score. His music, which retains Oriental overtones in an instrumentation for Western musicians (who don't play the hichiriki or the sho), slips in and out of tonality, but Mayuzumi is uncertain about the effect on Western ears. "I cannot say that my music is really Japanese-flavored," he says. "But I am a Buddhist and very interested in Zen philosophy, so I hope some kind of Japanese spirit reflects in my music...
Mayuzumi arrived in New York from his home in Tokyo barely in time to see Bugaku's final rehearsal. He had never seen Balanchine's interpretation of his music before. He smiled enigmatically when asked if he had intended his music for a wedding scene, but said that everything was "just as I expected-only much better...