Kaguyahime

The legend  

In the tenth century Japanese story Kaguyahime a bamboo 
cutter discovers a tiny creature - a girl of radiant beauty - 
in a bamboo stem. Enchanted, he takes her home and raises 
her as his own daughter. She grows quickly into a young 
woman. Soon tales of her great beauty attract many suitors 
who try in vain to catch a glimpse of her. Five particular 
young men persist. She sets each of them an impossible task. 
Their failure ensures that she remains untouched.

The villagers hold a feast to celebrate the girl's ‘’coming of age’’ 
and give her the name Kaguyahime - "she who shines through 
the night". The peace of the village is suddenly disturbed by 
noblemen curious to see the famed beauty of Kaguyahime. 
Fighting breaks out between the villagers and the noblemen. 
The Emperor (Mikado) is informed of the increasing violence. 
In order to see for himself the cause of so much unrest 
amongst his people, he arranges to meet Kaguyahime. Moved 
by her beauty, the Emperor asks her to live at his palace. 
She refuses, and finally explains that she has been sent 
down from  the moon to spend only a short time on earth. 
At the next full moon,Kaguyahime knows she must return. 
The Emperor refuses to accept this, and orders a guard of 
his men to prevent her escape.

However, as the full moon rises, its light is so powerful that 
the Emperor and his guards are blinded, thus enabling 
Kaguyahime to ascend, unharmed, back to the moon.

	
	
About the production

The moment I became acquainted with the legend of 
Kaguyahime I could not resist its fantastic and timeless 
reality, which only exists in myths and legends. 

Naturally, at once I felt confronted with the essential 
problem of how - or whether at all - legends can be 
transposed, transcribed and translated into another 
way of thinking, into another culture. However, I was 
encouraged by the fact that traces of some basic sources 
of wisdom and knowledge are common to many cultures 
- like invisible roots which somewhere underground 
entangle and meet one another.

Whenever a choreographic idea is confronted with a 
literary subject, unorthodox solutions become almost 
inevitable. Dance and literature are too different to 
become a substitute for each other.

Accepting these incongruities as a worthwhile challenge 
and as a  very special learning process - we have soon 
realized that a confinement to simple means would lead 
us to desirable solutions. We have decided to use the 
existing devices of the general theatre equipment 
(pipes, bars, plastic floor, make-up boxes, mirrors etc.). 
By assigning them to a different function, they adopted 
a new meaning - and so they were transformed into 
surrealistic images. Bearing a sense of duality, these 
objects created  the 'magical' space' and helped us to 
unite the opposing elements: The literary subject and 
choreographic idiom, The European and Asian culture.

It also provided a solution to our attempt to melt the 
four main components (music, dance, stage and light) 
into one organic body telling a story conceived some 
1000 years ago somewhere in Asia.

                    Jiří Kylián