What do the ways of walking and moving on stage mean?

One of the first things a viewer notices is that nobody walks normally. This is not excess in the acting: the walk itself is a means of speaking the role. The kabuki body does not carry everyday movement onto the stage. Every kind of locomotion is designed as style.

The foundation is suri-ashi. Hips lowered and settled, the soles never leaving the floor, the upper body free of bobbing — a basis inherited from noh. On that stable ground the differences of role are laid: a high-ranking figure moves broadly and unhurriedly, an agitated one in small quick steps, an old man with slackened knees. Stride, speed and the placement of weight become information about the person. Inner tension shows too: the walk of someone resolved differs visibly from the walk of someone in doubt.

Sometimes the walk is the spectacle. The roppō of aragoto — the great stamping withdrawal along the hanamichi — is watched as an independent art in itself. The onnagata's carriage is another system again: the feet placed slightly inward, the body's axis drawn a little in, giving form to softness and reserve. Gesture follows the same principle: the turn of a fan, the handling of a sleeve, each a word in a vocabulary of feeling. Once you can read movement, kabuki becomes several times more interesting.