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Lecture by Jotaro Ota «Tours of the Kabuki Theater in Moscow and Leningrad in 1928»

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September 10 at the Voronezh Regional Art Museum named after I.N. Kramskoi hosted a lecture by professor at Kumamoto-Gakuen University (Japan) Jotaro Ota “Tours of the Kabuki Theater in Moscow and Leningrad in 1928” . At an event dedicated to the Year of the Theater in Russia, Professor Dzetaro Ota told the museum guests about the Kabuki Theater.

Song, dance and mastery are three Japanese characters that add up to one word – “Kabuki”. In the production, each movement is refined and verified over the years, any change in facial expression is rehearsed thousands of times. This type of theater appeared in the 17th century and can be called the Japanese folk theater, since its motives were originally traditional Japanese myths and legends. In the theater, all roles were played by men, dressing in traditional silk kimonos, wigs and applying a complicated white make-up. The bright outfits of the actors hid a large number of special symbols that have a certain meaning.

During the lecture, Zetaro Ota repeatedly drew the attention of the audience to the fact that “the theater is a living organism, which is characterized by changes.”

Thanks to modern equipment, viewers were able to hear excerpts of productions rich in unusual intonations. The guests of the lecture learned that kabuki troupes very rarely travel outside their country. The first foreign tour in the history of the kabuki theater took place in Moscow and Leningrad in 1928, and, despite the unusualness and originality of the genre, they conquered the Soviet public. The main topic of the lecture was dedicated to this event.

About the lecturer:

Professor Zetaro Ota – candidate of literary sciences, Russian scholar. In 1989, he graduated from the Russian language department at Tokyo University of Foreign Languages. In 1992 he defended his thesis “Poetry of Alexander Blok in the” Trilogy of Incarnation “.” The area of ​​scientific interests and publications of Zetaro Ota concerns Russian literature and cultural studies of such authors as Andrei Bely, Alexander Blok, Ivanov-Razumnik, Evgeny Zamyatin, Boris Pilnyak, Korney Chukovsky, Mikhail Zoshchenko and other writers of 1910-1930, as well as the Kabuki Theater in Russian theater and art.