This weekend I went to a show by Les Grands Ballets Canadiens. I always buy two tickets and bring a date. This time it was one of my favourite companions, who is reliably enthusiastic about life, and music and dance, and particular to this ballet, drums. I had actually seen this show the year before with another friend who loved the drums, but wanted to return, it was so memorable, with another who would enjoy. This time, not only was there a drum on stage, but an entire visiting music troop (?) called Kodo, playing traditional drums, the ryuteki (a bamboo flute), and sitting high enough in the orchestra to be seen, 3 costumed performers of a gagaku emsemble, bringing to mind another era with their traditional costumes and sober demeanours representing court musicians in a royal palace.
The premise of the ballet is a story I had not heard of growing up. It is based on an ancient Japanese Tale It starts with a poor old childless bamboo cutter (this sounds a little like Gepetto and his beloved Pinocchio) who discovers a tiny creature (Thumbellina, anyone) inside a glowing bamboo stalk. She is beautiful, and he brings her home to raise her as his daughter. Her name means "she who shines through the night", and she is the Moon Princess. She grows up and many men fall in love with her. She gives 5 suitors 5 impossible tasks, and they all fail. Instead of bringing peace and wonder, her beauty disrupts the village and fighting breaks out. The emperor's troops, in arriving to reestablish peace, discover her beauty, and the Emperor Mikado wants to keep her as his own. She does not want to go, but in a visually gorgeous scene with flowing fabric like the waves of the ocean, Mikado keeps her against her will. But inevitably, like all things captured that ought to be free, she must be released, and once again returns to the Moon from where she came. From that distance, humans can look up and admire, without succumbing to the sin of covetousness.
There were two other spectacularly vivid scenes. The first was one that I felt. The large drums were on the same side as we were, and at E32 and E34, we were so close that I was no longer sure if my own heart was beating, the drums reverberating as such a rapid pace that I was overcome with the feeling of the Kodo beats, which literally means heart beat, or secondly, children of the drum. The stage had two drummers. One seemed ordinary, but rhythmic. The one was giving his all, shirtless and at times drumming above his head; at other times half laying half sitting in front of a drum, abs flexed, and drumming his heart out. The ballerinas alway impress with their strength and muscle definition, but this guy gave everyone a run for their money in the fit department! The last scene (and don't forget, Mikado emprisoning Kaguyahime was another vivid scene) was a fight scene when the villagers, lit with strobe lights, flew across the stage at each other and across in each direction. It was breathtaking!
It is not often that I go twice to the same show, but this one was worth it!
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