Noh performance - Monday 27th @ 18.30

A Noh performance by the grand master's group, Kiyokazu Kanze ( http://japanecho.net/society/0014/) along with violin recital by Ambi Subramaniam at the Raj Bhavan to celebrate 60 years of India - Japan diplomatic relations.

Compulsory registration (Name, Address, Contact number & No. of people accompanying) for security purposes

Registration Details: Email to ijcci@airtelmail.in OR visit www.ijccik.org

Phone: 080 – 26583522, 26580466

Mobile: 9449837370, 9886064822

Be seated at 18.10

A brief note on Noh :

Japanese drama before the Meiji Restoration consists of three main types of performance: the Noh play, Kabuki and the puppet drama or Joruri. Noh, the earliest of three, was certainly in existence six hundred years ago and was itself the result of a long and gradual development.In the middle of the eleventh century an early form in the line which was to give rise to Noh consisted of simple humorous farces based on such characters as immoral priests and nuns and countrymen visiting the capital for the first time. Great Buddhist temples employed professional players to perform at the times of festivals and ceremonies, and largely as a result of this, the humorous plays came to be displaced by others of a more serious nature. 

Many of these later plays were designed to explain the significance of religious rites or to depict Buddhist legends for the simple people, and although they came to be more highly regarded than the humorous plays, the latter did not disappear The comedies known as Kyogen, which are still given today as interludes between Noh plays, bear witness to the unbroken existence of this type of play, for many of them are based on the same themes as were used in comedies of the eleventh century. The series of plays soon spread beyond the confines of the temples and thus gained greater freedom in the choice if their material. They came to aim not at religious teaching but at the depiction of artistic beauty by means of song and dance, and it is at this stage that they become Noh. In order to achieve this aim full use was made of the rich store of earlier Japanese literature and of numerous song and dance entertainments current at the time. Themes ware based on incidents in history or literature and the sung parts of the texts richly embellished with appropriate quotations from poetry. Various types of music were blended to form a unique style and dances performed in other types of entertainment were adapted and fitted in with the music and song to make the composite art of Noh.