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Although kabuki dance drama was started by a female dance troupe in 1603 led by Izumo no Okuni, by 1629 females were banned for being too erotic. The actress’ post performance prostitution side hustle didn’t help their cause. Since then, for the past 400 years male actors have played both female and male characters.
Actors who play females in kabuki are called ‘onnagata’. They devote their entire lives to portraying women on stage. Within 3 days of landing in Japan, bowie sought out legendary onnagata bando tamasaburo to learn how to apply makeup. Celia Philo, the graphic designer who worked with Bowie to conceptualize the cover, said of Bando, “It was like being in the room with an exotic animal.” Bando taught David Bowie how to apply traditional kabuki makeup – with a stark, white base layer and bold accents over it. Bowie later painted himself famously aladin sane with thunderbolt.
Bando recounts, “I believe that the first time I met David Bowie was in April 1973, when he came to Japan for his first tour here. Bowie was 26, and I had just turned 23. The memory is a little indistinct, but I think he told me that he wanted to see me putting on make-up. He came to my dressing room, sat behind me, and watched me intently as I did my face. The red shading off around my eyes must have seemed unusual to someone from abroad.”
According to bando, “I act a woman with the eyes and feelings of a man; like a man painting the portrait of a woman…. I gather up knowledge by watching: this is how they react, this is how they place their hand on their hair. I gather up this type of material and transform it. Thus, my masculine instinct evolves, and, in such a way, patterns of womanliness take shape.”
“Onnagata show a man’s idea of women based on observation. The masculine idea of a woman has been analyzed and broken down into set movement and vocal patterns, and these performance techniques have become stage conventions. A typical man has broader shoulders, is generally taller, with bigger hands and feet. Since the feminine ideal involves appearing small, delicate, and graceful, the actor must keep his knees bent and pressed together, with his feet turned inward. Shoulders must be pulled down and back, with the shoulder blades pressed together until they touch, and until it hurts. In Kabuki, an onnagata’s performance is based on having a male body underneath. For the audience this is an essential prerequisite, and there is a constant ambiguous interplay between the male actor’s body and the female role he is playing. man-made form of beauty.”
Born in 1950, Bando had a bout of polio that left him sickly, thin and unable to walk until he was three years old. Through dance therapy, he overcame his illness and found he had an affinity for dance. Ever since then, “All I wanted was to dance and be on stage,” he said. “I never thought about choosing; I just was.” click here to see Bando dance
“I believe that to become what your imagination creates as you act is to become something that is not yourself, which can then develop into a state where you vanish from this world to become free and something that is beyond merely human, or to become assimilated into space, a scent, or a part of nature. My interpretation of the performing arts is something that originates in childhood play – be part of the flow of water, a cherry tree, perhaps a frog, and then a monkey – but gradually becomes more sophisticated, such as being able to express a literary idea or something that is culturally profound. In addition to what I have described thus far, I believe that the single most important goal from both my perspective and that of the audience in viewing a work of art is to fly out of the everyday and allow one’s soul to wander freely.”
“I came to onnagata through my love of dance. I danced from a very early age. The biggest difference for me between western and Japanese dance is that western dance has jumps. There’s hardly any jumping in Japanese dance. We don’t try to defy the forces of gravity. In japan on moves level with the ground. Giving only the impression of leaping. The big difference is whether one sees the dance as an act of meditation. Or simply as a physical act. The saying goes, “with just one step one can travel five hundred. it means that action is completed with one gesture. The audience can imagine the actor has arrived at his destination.”
Bowie came to japanese dance in the mid 60’s in London thanks to mime instructor artist Lindsay Kemp, who initially introduced Bowie to the movements and theatre conventions used in both Noh and Kabuki. he learned to move and express himself with no words. With miming, bowie was able to reimagine the way rock music concerts were performed. When asked about the string of personae he’d had over the course of his career and what motivated him to create them, Bowie replied in similar fashion to Bando: “I used to tell everybody, and myself, that it was a way of hiding. I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn't really have the nerve to sing my songs ... I decided to do them in disguise. ... Rather than be me -- which must be incredibly boring to anyone -- I'd take Ziggy in, or Aladdin Sane or The Thin White Duke. It was a very strange thing to do I suppose at heart I’m still — well I’m not anymore — but I was always quite shy,” he explained. “But the older I get, I realize it’s more about — I just like telling stories….I’m a storyteller at heart, as abstract as they may get,” he added. “But inherently I like to take people on a journey and say, ‘And guess what happens next…’”
For his concerts, Bowie wore a “shortie kimono” with matching silky boots, his makeup was onnagata-inspired, and his celebrated hairstyle, as created by Yamamoto, was electric red in color, imitating the look of a flaming red-lion dance wig of kabuki theater. As Bowie’s lyrics to the song “Ziggy Stardust” describe it, the alien rocker was “like some cat from Japan.”
Actors who play females in kabuki are called ‘onnagata’. They devote their entire lives to portraying women on stage. Within 3 days of landing in Japan, bowie sought out legendary onnagata bando tamasaburo to learn how to apply makeup. Celia Philo, the graphic designer who worked with Bowie to conceptualize the cover, said of Bando, “It was like being in the room with an exotic animal.” Bando taught David Bowie how to apply traditional kabuki makeup – with a stark, white base layer and bold accents over it. Bowie later painted himself famously aladin sane with thunderbolt.
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| bando made up |
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| aladin sane |
Bando recounts, “I believe that the first time I met David Bowie was in April 1973, when he came to Japan for his first tour here. Bowie was 26, and I had just turned 23. The memory is a little indistinct, but I think he told me that he wanted to see me putting on make-up. He came to my dressing room, sat behind me, and watched me intently as I did my face. The red shading off around my eyes must have seemed unusual to someone from abroad.”
According to bando, “I act a woman with the eyes and feelings of a man; like a man painting the portrait of a woman…. I gather up knowledge by watching: this is how they react, this is how they place their hand on their hair. I gather up this type of material and transform it. Thus, my masculine instinct evolves, and, in such a way, patterns of womanliness take shape.”
“Onnagata show a man’s idea of women based on observation. The masculine idea of a woman has been analyzed and broken down into set movement and vocal patterns, and these performance techniques have become stage conventions. A typical man has broader shoulders, is generally taller, with bigger hands and feet. Since the feminine ideal involves appearing small, delicate, and graceful, the actor must keep his knees bent and pressed together, with his feet turned inward. Shoulders must be pulled down and back, with the shoulder blades pressed together until they touch, and until it hurts. In Kabuki, an onnagata’s performance is based on having a male body underneath. For the audience this is an essential prerequisite, and there is a constant ambiguous interplay between the male actor’s body and the female role he is playing. man-made form of beauty.”
Born in 1950, Bando had a bout of polio that left him sickly, thin and unable to walk until he was three years old. Through dance therapy, he overcame his illness and found he had an affinity for dance. Ever since then, “All I wanted was to dance and be on stage,” he said. “I never thought about choosing; I just was.” click here to see Bando dance
“I believe that to become what your imagination creates as you act is to become something that is not yourself, which can then develop into a state where you vanish from this world to become free and something that is beyond merely human, or to become assimilated into space, a scent, or a part of nature. My interpretation of the performing arts is something that originates in childhood play – be part of the flow of water, a cherry tree, perhaps a frog, and then a monkey – but gradually becomes more sophisticated, such as being able to express a literary idea or something that is culturally profound. In addition to what I have described thus far, I believe that the single most important goal from both my perspective and that of the audience in viewing a work of art is to fly out of the everyday and allow one’s soul to wander freely.”
“I came to onnagata through my love of dance. I danced from a very early age. The biggest difference for me between western and Japanese dance is that western dance has jumps. There’s hardly any jumping in Japanese dance. We don’t try to defy the forces of gravity. In japan on moves level with the ground. Giving only the impression of leaping. The big difference is whether one sees the dance as an act of meditation. Or simply as a physical act. The saying goes, “with just one step one can travel five hundred. it means that action is completed with one gesture. The audience can imagine the actor has arrived at his destination.”
Bowie came to japanese dance in the mid 60’s in London thanks to mime instructor artist Lindsay Kemp, who initially introduced Bowie to the movements and theatre conventions used in both Noh and Kabuki. he learned to move and express himself with no words. With miming, bowie was able to reimagine the way rock music concerts were performed. When asked about the string of personae he’d had over the course of his career and what motivated him to create them, Bowie replied in similar fashion to Bando: “I used to tell everybody, and myself, that it was a way of hiding. I was painfully shy, withdrawn. I didn't really have the nerve to sing my songs ... I decided to do them in disguise. ... Rather than be me -- which must be incredibly boring to anyone -- I'd take Ziggy in, or Aladdin Sane or The Thin White Duke. It was a very strange thing to do I suppose at heart I’m still — well I’m not anymore — but I was always quite shy,” he explained. “But the older I get, I realize it’s more about — I just like telling stories….I’m a storyteller at heart, as abstract as they may get,” he added. “But inherently I like to take people on a journey and say, ‘And guess what happens next…’”
For his concerts, Bowie wore a “shortie kimono” with matching silky boots, his makeup was onnagata-inspired, and his celebrated hairstyle, as created by Yamamoto, was electric red in color, imitating the look of a flaming red-lion dance wig of kabuki theater. As Bowie’s lyrics to the song “Ziggy Stardust” describe it, the alien rocker was “like some cat from Japan.”
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| like some cat from japan |
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| lion 'cat' red hair inspiration for ziggy |
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