![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Entry tags:
monday.
I watched Tarantella! tonight. It's the revue part of Asami Hikaru's and my own Maikaze Rira's farewell show, the musical being Lucifer's Tears which I will without a doubt be watching for Christmas this year.
I used to think there were three truly remarkable revues during Komu and Maachan's era, the first being Joyful!! a year into their run, Les Collages also fairly early on and then, this last one, Tarantella! If you'd asked me to rank them back during my glory Zuka fan days, I'd have said: Les Collages, Tarantella! and Joyful!! But having rewatched Tarantella! now with fresh, unbiased eyes, I really think it's the best of the three. It's a masterpiece of a revue, constantly changing, evolving, staying catchy and engaging scene after scene. There's no break or lull. It has the jazzy notes from Les Collages and the enormous sense of team accomplishment from Joyful!! It's the best of both worlds. I'll be rewatching it tomorrow, the "another angle" version, because these were the days of Zuka when each show came with two different recordings, one for the casual viewer and one for the die-hard fans.
Apparently, I'm still a die-hard fan.
Maachan is absolutely exquisite in this, though. It's her peak performance as a dancer. So many good scenes for her. Luckily a few of them are still to be found on YouTube, so sorry not sorry about the spam here.
First and foremost, The Atlantic...
It's a relatively simple duet between her and Komu, but the way she dances in slippers only, on bare feet, so tiny and so elegant and with such sensuality to her. She really embodies the ocean, pulling a sailor in and rocking him on gentle waves. This is, as far as I remember, the only scene of them all that is with a "Maachan angle" in the die-hard fan recording. But I also remember it to be amazing, so looking forward to that tomorrow.
Secondly, The Butterfly...
This is more of an ensemble scene. Komu is a spider, capturing butterflies, until he meets Maachan's butterfly who instead captures his fancy. The whole setting with costumes and everything is unrivaled the best piece of Zuka revue I have ever seen, I'm really sorry it's not in better quality here, but hopefully you can get a sense of it anyway.
The last video from Tarantella! that I could find was the pair (trio) dance from the revue with Komu, Maachan and Mizu Natsuki who would be taking over Yukigumi as top star after Komu graduated. It's a very jazzy kind of choreography and I love it, the elegant simplicity of it.
However, watching this revue and seeing on Instagram how Maachan is still doing all-female theatre, although she must be in her late forties at the least, has made me want to write Takarazuka inspired fic again. I kind of got this plot bunny of a former musumeyaku who rents a whole theatre to stage all-female revues with former actresses like herself, probably with some queer romance plotline thrown in...
Back when I was active in the Zuka fandom, writing RPF was really, really frowned upon. I think, with the new wave and generations of fans, this has loosened up a lot, but it's still something that can generate some debate. Our answer back then, because everyone wanted to write Zuka fic, of course, was to write original characters in Zuka-inspired settings instead. Evidently RPF in disguise, but that was how it was done. And since that's what I know, I think I might want to try my hands on that again. I have a week of nothing waiting ahead, I might as well keep myself entertained.
Should probably reread some Murakami first, though. For stylistic purposes.