Takarazuka

Just found out about this recently - Takarazuka Revue - an all-women theatre troupe as opposed to Kabuki which is all-male. youTube has loads of video clips with snippets of the various shows put up over the last 10 years.

They perform musicals in Operatic style, like Elisabeth, Phantom of the Opera (but not the Andrew Lloyd Webber one), Figaro, Wuthering Heights, to name a few.

The Takarazuka Revue was founded in 1913 by Kobayashi Ichizo as a means for drawing in more tourism dollars for the city. They trained a cast of young, chaste women to perform western-style musicals.

Kind of reminds me of Hula Girls and how they brought in tourists with their hip swaying ways. hehe... Fun movie by the way... but I digress...

Takarazuka Kagekidan (officially translated as the “Takarazuka Revue Company”) is divided into 5 troupes: “Flower,” “Moon,” “Snow”, “Star” and "Cosmos", each with their top "actors" and actresses.

Thousands of girls between 15 - 18 apply for entrance into the music school yearly but only 40-50 are accepted and trained, taking gruelling lessons in dance and acting and all sorts of enrichment classes. After the 1st year, each student will be chosen to play either the male role (otokoyaku - most coveted) or female role (musumeyaku). A famous Otokoyaku was Yōka Wao who stands at 172cm!!

Once chosen, they have to learn how to move, speak, and sing like the selected gender. The otokoyaku students learn techniques to deepen their voices, and masculinise their gestures and speech patterns. The musumeyaku are trained to be ultra-feminine, in order to better emphasize the masculinity of the otokoyaku.

Kids have been known to commit suicide because they were not chosen to become otokoyaku! This is serious business!

Click to read more about the Takarazuka Revue.

Here's a little clip from Elisabeth - judging from the comments, their fans have their preferences and they can get a little crazy about the stars.

If you have watched some anime, it sort of reminds me of them but with real actors. Long flowing colourful hair, elaborate costumes, music and special effects. LOL... Here's a comparison.



Enjoy...



Here's another one. See how skinny and tall they are :
Ernest in Love(Flower) -- Mr. Bunbury