Katayama-san said something surprising the other day. He was urging us to practice hard and confessed that he was feeling competitive with the teachers of the other disciplines, Nihonbuyo and Kyogen. Then last night, Oe-san really worked on our kamae form and said, "Practice very hard because you have me again as your teacher tomorrow night!" They both grinned as they said this, and we chuckled nervously, but clearly the pressure is on. We don't want to disappoint our teachers; so we are all spending extra hours at the center every day to practice. My biggest challenge right now (besides how beat up my feet feel) is learning the chant we have to memorize. It would be one thing to memorize a chant of English words (NOW THE HUN GRY LI ON ROAR SAND THE WOLF BE HOWLS THE MOON) but these are disjointed Japanese words in medieval dialect. They do mean something, but even the Japanese have trouble translating it. It's apparently all about flying above the world and standing with one foot on a treasure - very poetic and Katayama-san will be dancing while we chant it. So this is an 8th of what I'm faced with on the page: SU NA WA CHI SU GA TA WO A RA WA SHI TA MA I TE TE N NO SA SU TE WA... You see my problem? By the way, I typed that without looking at the page; so I'm making headway. I just don't want to 'let the side down'.
Kate,
ReplyDeleteAre your classes in English? Do you have an interpreter? Is your phrase book helping you tremendously? Good luck with your chanting. I love this trip for you, but most especially, I love your blog. Arigato gozaimashta.
We have translators, but they don't always understand enough about theatre to translate. The best moments are when the sensai give us the imagery of what is going on in the dance, and we have those "aha!" moments. One translator was driving me nuts because she would preface every interpretation with "Teacher is advising you to ..." I finally mentioned to her before the next class that she was working too hard and that she only had to translate the words that actually passed sensai's lips. It's better now. My Japanese-speaking classmates tried to interpret the chant for me, but it's a little like interpreting Chaucer because it's medieval Japanese. So they get what they are saying, but I don't. I'm using a very strange method to memorize that I'll try to explain later if it works.
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