Somegoro in Las Vegas: Kabuki "Lion King"

Some folks may remember an episode early in January on Kabuki performance in Las Vegas (Kabuki in Las Vegas to Stay: Are You Serious Somegoro? By Nathan Shiga, January 18, 2016). It looks he is serious after all as the second performance opened on May 3, a modern interpretation of a Noh classic "Shakkyo".

The main program is "Lion King" portraying a lion pushing a child lion off the stone bridge (hence shakkyo or stone bridge) and the child lion battling his way up, overcoming hardships along his way.

Somegoro creates a world of classic Kabuki tricks - midair stunt, quick changes, and what not. The most eye-catching is a huge snake moving about in rapid motions on thunderous sounds. Accompanying the performance is a fresh visual display of images to beef up a rough-and-tumble fight.

After the opening day, Ichikawa Somero said the visual component could be a key production method and added:

"I have a feeling that the use of visual components could be an attractive production gimmick. This Las Vegas performance is our maiden trial."

The “Lion King” in Las Vegas performed daily till May 7 local time.

Meanwhile, NTT and Shochiku performed a joint experiment of Kabuki appreciation linking both Tokyo and Las Vegas. A high-precision 4K image, 360-degree images, etc. were transmitted to a hall in Tokyo with several hundreds of viewers watching them live from Las Vegas.

Both companies will experiment ICT (information and communications technology) to help expound Kabuki appreciation. President Jun-ichi Sakomoto of Shochiku comments:

"Kabuki has a history constant experiments through the past four hundred years."

Vice President Hiromichi Shinohara says:

"We are all anxious to assist Japanese culture to disseminate far and wide into the world".

Now, you've set you conquered Las Vegas. Where to next, Somegoro? (Nathan Shiga)