Word: kabuki
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...owners were studying ballet or not. Dozens of school companies present productions whenever they can, while three big TV stations offer regular ballet shows. It has all the appearance of a fad, for Japan's own ancient, formalized dance tradition is as different from West ern ballet as Kabuki is from burlesque. But underneath the surface is a foundation of serious interest...
...hours the audience's eyes can take in as many as 30 separate sets, gaily worked in paper, while the ears are assailed by age-old Kabuki tunes in Broadway orchestrations and such Western song hits as Oh! My Papa with Japanese lyrics...
...stage is populated entirely by girls, acting in the stylized gestures of Kabuki but dancing Western style and singing everything from high soprano to near-baritone. The voices are often first-rate...
...musical revues they perform have paper-thin plots that are traditional in the beginning, but undergo metamorphoses as the show wears on. Even such a popular set piece as the famed Kabuki Lion Dance gets a startling new tail twist: it starts off traditionally with a dancer in a furry, tasseled leonine head, but in the end scores of Takarazuka girls, dressed as butterflies in tight leotards and wings, abandon their fluttering and go into a high-kicking routine to rival the Rockettes...
Truckin' Chorus. Impresario Kobayashi originally wrote his own scripts from Japanese fairy tales and familiar Kabuki and Noh plots, got his musicians to adapt traditional music to two-step and waltz rhythms. "I was trying to build a musical bridge between East and West," he says...