Learning to Kneel: Noh, Modernism, and Journeys in Teaching (Modernist Latitudes)

In __Learning to Kneel__, Carrie J. Preston locates noh drama's influence on American and European writers, dancers, and composers. Preston's work has been profoundly shaped by her training in noh performance technique in Tokyo, a cross-cultural exchange that challenged her assumptions. Pound, Yeats, Brecht, and others are often criticized for their Orientalist tendencies and misappropriation of noh, but Preston's analysis and her own journey reflect a more nuanced understanding of cultural exchange. __Learning to Kneel__ locates noh drama’s influence on American and European writers, dancers, and composers. Carrie J. Preston’s work has been profoundly shaped by her training in noh performance. While her subjects are often criticized for Orientalist tendencies, Preston’s own journey reflects a more nuanced understanding of cultural exchange. In this inventive mix of criticism, scholarship, and personal reflection, Carrie J. Preston explores the nature of cross-cultural teaching, learning, and performance. Throughout the twentieth century, Japanese noh was a major creative catalyst for American and European writers, dancers, and composers. The noh theater's stylized choreography, poetic chant, spectacular costumes and masks, and engagement with history inspired Western artists as they reimagined new approaches to tradition and form. In Learning to Kneel, Preston locates noh's important influence on such canonical figures as Pound, Yeats, Brecht, Britten, and Beckett. These writers learned about noh from an international cast of collaborators, and Preston traces the ways in which Japanese and Western artists influenced one another. Preston's critical work was profoundly shaped by her own training in noh performance technique under a professional actor in Tokyo, who taught her to kneel, bow, chant, and submit to the teachings of a conservative tradition. This encounter challenged Preston's assumptions about effective teaching, particularly her inclinations to emphasize Western ideas of innovation and subversion and to overlook the complex ranges of agency experienced by teachers and students. It also inspired new perspectives regarding the generative relationship between Western writers and Japanese performers. Pound, Yeats, Brecht, and others are often criticized for their orientalist tendencies and misappropriation of noh, but Preston's analysis and her journey reflect a more nuanced understanding of cultural exchange. -- Amazon.com Throughout the twentieth century, Japanese noh drama was a major creative catalyst for American and European writers, dancers, and composers. The noh theater's stylized choreography, poetic chant, spectacular costumes and masks, and engagement with history inspired Western artists as they reimagined new approaches to tradition and form. In Learning to Kneel, Carrie J. Preston locates noh's influence on Pound's imagism, Yeats's Irish National Theater, Brecht's learning plays, Britten's church parables, and Beckett's spare dramaturgy. These artists learned about noh from an international cast of .. Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- Abbreviations -- Introduction to Noh Lessons -- 1. Ezra Pound as Noh Student -- 2. Theater in the "Deep": W.B. Yeats's At the Hawk's Well -- 3 . Itō Michio's Hawk Tours in Modern Dance and Theater -- 4 . Pedagogical Intermission: A Lesson Plan for Bertolt Brecht's Revisions -- 5. Noh Circles in Twentieth-Century Japanese Performance -- 6 . Trouble with Titles and Directors: Benjamin Britten and William Plomer's Curlew River and Samuel Beckett's Footfalls/Pas -- Coda -- Notes -- Glossary -- Bibliography -- Index Table of Contents 6 Preface 8 Acknowledgments 12 Abbreviations 16 Introduction to Noh Lessons 20 1. Ezra Pound as Noh Student 42 2. Theater in the “Deep”: W. B. Yeats’s At the Hawk’s Well 82 3. Ito Michio’s Hawk Tours in Modern Dance and Theater 122 4. Pedagogical Intermission: A Lesson Plan for Bertolt Brecht’s Revisions 168 5. Noh Circles in Twentieth-Century Japanese Performance 182 6. Trouble with Titles and Directors: Benjamin Britten and William Plomer’s Curlew River and Samuel Beckett’s Footfalls/Pas 222 Coda 262 Notes 266 Glossary 328 Index 362