Dances at Kitano Shrine

Saturday two friends and I had tickets for the Kitano Odori, the dance performance for the geisha and maiko of the Kamishichiken geisha district. Unlike the Miyako Odori, this show was in the evening. This time we had 1st-class tickets with the tea service included, which was very much worth the extra money. As we were walking to the theatre, we passed a group of maiko who were leaving. I believe that the maiko are split into batches, with one group performing the early show, one the afternoon show and the last group performing in the late show. This would make a lot of sense, especially since the maiko only had a couple dances in the program. Compared to the Gion theatre, the one in Kamishichiken was a lot more intimate, though it might have helped that we were seated on the first floor right at the entrance to the walkway that runs up the side of the theatre to the stage. Before we took our seats, however, we went to our tea service. We were seated in a room with benches and tables organized around a tatami platform which was laid-out with tea ceremony implements. We were shown to empty spaces and given a small Japanese tea cake on a nice plate and a cup of matcha. After a moment a very young maiko and a young geisha came out. The geisha set about doing a tea ceremony, while the maiko sat and was pretty. After we’d had our tea and taken our plate (which we wrapped in the paper that they had helpfully provided for us) we made our way slowly to the theatre itself, walking through the little garden in the courtyard on our way. The performance was made up of several short pieces based (I believe) on folktales. The first piece was about two women, a plum blossom spirit and a cherry blossom spirit, demanding that a young male wisteria spirit decide who was the most beautiful. They started off flirting with him, but soon started fighting with each other in earnest, which seemed to scare the male spirit, who ran off with the two women’s ladies-in-waiting. The next piece was about a young woodcutter who helped a swan by removing an arrow from her wing. In return, the swan wove the woodcutter fine fabric out of its feathers. This made the woodcutter greedy, however, and he demanded of her first more fabric, and then a famous bow that was in the bottom of the nearby lake, figuring that (because she was a water bird) she could get it for him. He bullied the swan into getting it for him, and then, once he had it, decided that he should shoot more swans down so that she could use their feathers to make more cloth. This made the swan (understandably, I feel) unhappy, so she threw herself in front of his arrow. The woodcutter, feeling pretty bad about this, pulled out the arrow, but the swan was extremely displeased and, wrapping the cloth that she’d woven around his neck, dragged him into the lake. The next piece was a comedic one about a fox spirit in the form of a lovely woman trying to trick a hapless traveller, and then, after intermission, was a dance by the maiko set to a song about the Kamishichiken district. Next was a dance piece that, I believe, was about a geisha and her progressively drunker customer enjoying Gion Matsuri, while the next one seemed to about a rabbit, a frog, a monkey and a fox having a good time, but the exact details were hard to understand. It was pretty funny, though. The final dance had all of the geisha and maiko in full formal dress against a backdrop of cherry blossoms, and ended with all of the performers throwing (I believe) handtowels to the audience. I didn’t catch one, which is probably okay. After the show we found some dinner at a lovely little restaurant not far from Kitano Tenmangu shrine. We were the only customers, but the owners were very nice, the food delicious, and the prices quite reasonable. After that it was time to go home, and after wearing kimono all evening it was pretty nice to get into some more comfortable clothes.
-Certain obi knots simply cannot be executed by oneself.
-It is hard to walk quickly in a kimono and zori (kimono shoes, kind of like formal flip-flops).
-I think that a couple of the Kamishichiken geisha are unusually tall. In the finale I saw one who was a good head and shoulders taller than the maiko standing by next to her. I think that she played one of the male roles.
-The kimono were, as expected, extremely beautiful, and I especially liked the hair ornaments for the senior maiko, which were butterflies made out of silver and hung all over in sparkly things.