The Kingdom of Ryūkyū was in a tributary relationship with the Chinese Empire. Approximately every twenty years (22 times in total), it received and hosted a delegation of between 400 and 500 people – and in extreme cases up to 700 – from the Chinese imperial court, which came to Ryūkyū to recognise a new king and remained for several months on each occasion. During their stay, the court organised banquets and ceremonies – traditionally known as the ‘Seven Banquets’. These included, for example, the coronation ceremony, the investiture banquet, the Autumn Festival, the Chrysanthemum Festival and various farewell ceremonies. At these events, various forms of court music, dance and, later, from 1719 onwards, kumiodori (a theatrical performance in which the protagonists recite their feelings in a monotonous, lament-like, poetic manner) were featured.
This was not merely entertainment: the Ryukyuan government regarded the hospitality extended to the Chinese envoys as a matter of great state importance. A dance magistrate organised the musical and dance performances.
The dances featured only aristocratic roles.
All performers of the classical court dances were men, even in dances depicting stylised female figures.
In 1879, the feudal fiefdoms were abolished and the court system collapsed. The former court artists lost their economic livelihood. They moved to the new commercial theatres in Naha and the surrounding area and had to win over an audience that no longer consisted of Chinese envoys or the royal court.
A paying mass audience was familiar with rural and urban life rather than courtly life, and so folk songs and everyday customs were incorporated into the repertoire, dealing with romantic relationships, entertainment districts, fishermen and fisherwomen, farmers and farm girls, and so on.
Today, both traditions (the courtly and the folk) are taught together.
The professionalisation of female dancers did not begin until 1945, after the Second World War. The first female master teachers emerged in the period up to 1970. It was also during this period that the schools developed which, to this day, organise dance training professionally.
Today, it is predominantly women who preserve the tradition of Okinawan dance. However, there are still men involved. This year, there were around 20 male exam contestants out of 87.
All genders learn all the dances and also perform them all. The ‘female dances’, for example, do not mean ‘dances that women dance’, but rather ‘dances in a female role or using a female movement language’; it is a category of role and movement. The same applies to the ‘male dances’. This is what makes training in Okinawan dance so exciting: you learn four stylistic languages (male-courtly, female-courtly, male-folk and female-folk). Every dance is assigned to one of these stylistic languages. When you change the dance, you change the stylistic language. This creates the particular challenge of fully internalising, understanding and embodying all four of these roles, and being able to switch between them on demand. On the same examination day, for example, I danced a male courtly dance and a female courtly dance.
Unfortunately, I didn’t pass the dance exam, which took place on 15 August. But there’s always next year, or the year after!
I’m very grateful for the experiences I had during the countless exam preparation sessions and the exam itself. From a European perspective, something like this is almost unimaginable. As a candidate, you’re supported during this time by – and I’m not exaggerating – ten people: the master, five other teachers and the senpai (other students who have already passed the exam in previous years). Each exam preparation session lasted between three and eleven hours. There were more than twenty of them. The support on the day of the exam itself began at half past five in the morning and lasted until eight o’clock in the evening. My support team went through this for three days in a row, because the four of us candidates from my master’s school were spread across all three exam days.
The five teachers and four senpai all have regular jobs. They had to carve out the time to attend the exam preparation sessions and the exam itself from their work schedules. One of the teachers shifted his work shifts to the night in order to do so. He never took any breaks and hardly slept.
The amount of remuneration for this service is regulated. The teacher received a comparatively small sum from each candidate for the preparation period of around four months, and a further sum on the day of the exam. The teacher who did my make-up on the day of the exam received a fee for this, as did the teacher who did my hair and costumes that day. That is all. Everyone else does it on a voluntary basis. This commitment to the next generation is part of the culture.
Even though it is part of the culture, I never took being carried by ten people for granted or regarded it as a given. That’s simply not on. I am deeply grateful to everyone from the bottom of my heart. Their full, attentive care is constantly focused on me; there is no negligence or even indifference. If the master or one of the teachers is currently attending to another candidate, there is guaranteed to be someone else there to give you tips on how to improve, to attentively guide you through your practice, and to demonstrate the movements for you. Movements that are all to be performed consciously, down to the last detail – even those of the eyes. All the specified angles must be spot on: posture, head tilt, the alignment of the head, body and hands, the degree of flexion in the hip, knee, ankle, elbow and wrist joints, and the positioning of the fingers. The slow movements must all occur at the correct moment in the music. Putting on the costume and applying make-up takes more than an hour per dance. During this time, you are surrounded by around three to five people who are constantly working on your appearance. Because the exam demands a great deal from you (physically, in terms of concentration and psychologically), everyone makes sure that you can relax as much as possible on the day of the exam, that you have enough to drink, and so on. The exam consists of two dances. The female dance lasts eight minutes and the male five minutes.
There was a nine-member jury, made up mostly of younger masters, most of whom were judging for the first time. They failed 26 out of 87 participants. People around me say it was a strict jury. My master, and all the other teachers around me who know what they’re talking about, were surprised by the negative outcome. My instructor has since asked some of the jury members what it was about my performance that wasn’t good enough. I’ll find out from her during the next training sessions. One thing is clear, though: the male dance would have been more powerful and expressive if I’d been training for a longer period of time. The female dance was good. It is recommended – or rather, it is assumed – that one has trained for three years before taking the exam. I’ve only been training since last November. Furthermore, the exam preparation sessions with my teacher didn’t start until May this year, a month later than usual.
A week after the exam, I was allowed to sing two songs at this year’s Shioya summer festival. I chose songs that I’d never sung in front of an audience before, which meant I had to practise them intensively during the week between the dance exam and the singing performance. Above all, I had to learn the lyrics by heart. And so I’ve now added two songs to my repertoire! That’s what I usually do for a performance where I can choose the songs myself: I see it as a challenge.
And again five days have passed since then. The exhaustion from the dance exam has subsided. Tomorrow we’ll be dancing Eisa again at Henna’s annual Obon ritual. I’ve been practising with everyone for it every evening since I finished the dance exam. This week, yet another typhoon has swept across Okinawa – the sixth this year. That usually means we have to stay indoors for two days. We had to cancel one Eisa practice session because of it. As we sing whilst we dance, I need to practise the lyrics a bit more until tomorrow. Last year was my first time taking part. I remember it as one of the most beautiful moments of my life.
#eisa #utasanshin #Okinawa #Ryukyu #dance #singing #エイサー #沖縄 #琉球 #舞踊 #唄三線
