"Kodo One Earth Tour: Mystery," the second work directed by artistic director Tamasaburo Bando, will resume its tour throughout Japan from September 2014. This performance brings a wondrous and sacred realm to the stage using the "mystery" created by folk arts since ancient times, presenting a world of darkness, light and reverberations with theatrics and new forms of expression.
This time, I created this piece with the idea that theatre-goers would experience the mood of mystery that they meet at a temple or a shrine, or when you go into the forest - places that are removed from daily life. A feeling that emerges from deep darkness. At the end of the show, I'll be happy if they leave with a sense of purification.
Tamasaburo Bando
Photo: Takashi Okamoto
Amidst reverberations like rumbles in the earth large serpents coil, demons and lions move wildly. They surface from the gloomy dark, eerie at times, and in some respects, even nostalgic… This work fuses Kodo's real worth, the dynamism of taiko expression, with the wondrous beauty and true charm that lie within rituals expressing the worship of myriad gods and reverence for nature that have been traditions in Japan since ancient times. This performance takes you on a voyage to the extraordinary, to a mysterious realm that lies in the beyond.
We hope you will enjoy Kodo's latest production, the profound world of "Mystery."