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Gintersdorfer/Klaßen: „Kabuki noir“. 09.11.2018, Hebbel am Ufer / HAU1, Berlin.

One kimono is blue and white, and it says: did you know the history of kabuki? It was started by a woman, and it was so intense, so dramatic, but the performers, some were also prostitutes, who were available for their services after the show, and it was too much for the authorities, so they decided it would only be for men, and thereafter only men could perform kabuki! And so, as the synthy beats come and go, we reinvision gender, borders, and translation through the re-re-remaking of this theatrical form. Old questions new portals. German dovetails French, and English cries out plainly and playfully about new contexts and possibilities until another kimono jumps up, shuffles to centre stage, gold and crimson, metal balls spill from its ripped ribs, before, one by one, each character, poised at the end of the hanamichi, disappears.