Tensuiren – Koenji Awaodori

At the Koenji Awodori festivals there are so many teams, called “ren” taking part that you will never be able to see them all, so either you find a spot where you can see as many of your favorite teams as possible (the teams starting positions are released well ahead of the festival start) or you run from position to position to see only your favorite teams. The latter strategy is not recommended, because not only will you always be several rows of people removed from the front but you’ll also risk missing teams that are ahead or behind schedule.

One of my all time favorite teams is the Tensuiren, who happens to have one of the best drum sections of any team I have ever seen. Their drummers are absolutely amazing, and this year I was lucky enough to have all members of the drum section stop right in front of me and perform one of their drum battles! I can tell you I was not the only member of the audience with goose bumps after that! The tensuiren sometimes have several members from Saipan, an island under American jurisdiction in Micronesia in the Pacific Island. I have seen these young men and women over the years and every time I see them they have gotten better. This time they were so good as to be indistinguishable from the native Japanese members of one of the best teams in Tokyo! That is a feat not to take lightly. I really hope I can seem them soon again.

And if you want to see more of Tensuiren, here is a blogpost from 2010. You’ll recognize some of the kids from this year’s performance!

Kusunokiren Dancing – Ota Ward Officials

Remember the two posts I did earlier on the Awaodori team from the Ota Ward Public Office? Here’s some more shots from their performance in Kawasaki City last month. The Awaodori season is now officially over (there might be one last performance tomorrow, but I am not sure) and it’s strange how sad that makes me. Now I’ll spend the winter longing for next year’s season to start again. The music, the people, the dances, the festival, the pure joy of spending hours looking for the best shots, finding familiar faces in the dance teams, learning about the teams and picking out your favorites. It’s all part of the experience for me. I even enjoy playing the arm chair critic!

As I’ve mentioned before, this particular team is made up of people either working at, or related to, the ward office in Ota, Tokyo. Usually you’ll find these people behind desks or issuing permits or handling taxes, but every now and then they turn into a kick-ass Awaodori team! These shots are a mix of men and women, especially one woman whom I manage to catch every time I go to see them (the lady in the first picture), she is a great dancer and always manages to look completely stoic about it! I also put together a little action series of one of my favorite Awaodori set formations, where the female dancers (the onna-odori) pull their arms into the sleeves and perform a dance balanced on one foot, turning rapidly and moving in formation. It is basically the ultimate marriage of comedy and elegance in dance! Watching it live really jump starts my heart. Most, if not all, Awaodori teams perform this routine or a variation on it but on most parade formations you might actually miss it. I’m sure it has a technical name, maybe someone can help us with this in the comment section? — Coal was really quick on this one, it’s called Onna Odori Yakko – rougly translated as “women’s kite dance”. The Kawasaki festival doesn’t have the parade formation so you can enjoy every team’s full set, from start to finish. There’s probably no better festival in the Kanto area to really study the finer points of the dance itself.

More Kusunokiren – Public Officials Dancing

There’s something very endearing in the idea that public officials would don costumes, rehears for months and months and then join festival, even outside their own communities, to entertain the public, on their free time! Here’s more photos of the Awaodori team Kusunokiren that I blogged about yesterday. This is taken from the mid-to-end section of their performance in which the male dancers are doing a particularly stupid looking routine, failing completely at imitating the beautiful dance moments earlier by the ladies. This is done on purpose of course, it’s comedy in the form of dance, and in typical Japanese fashion is done earnestly and orderly. There’s a few teams out there that does this particular routine and I love it every time I see it. The whole idea of Awaodori is that it’s supposed to be funny. It’s basically an image of how serious court dancing would look if performed by drunken town people having a laugh. In the whole world I have never seen anything like it, which is why I can’t stop blogging about it!

Kusunokiren – Awaodori Men

Last weekend I visited the Kawasaki Awaodori festival, which I thought would be the last Awaodori event of the year for me, but happily I saw my favorite team the day after in Shinjuku (maybe that will be the last one of the year). The Awaodori festival in Kawasaki (which is a big city just south of Tokyo, in Kanagawa prefecture and has nothing to do with the famous motor vehicle maker Kawasaki) is quite different from other festivals in that they don’t do the normal awaodori parade, instead the festival area is divided into six zones and each team perform a set in one of the zones before moving on to the next zone. So all the performances are set pieces which gives the teams the chance to perform much more complicated and elaborate pieces. All teams have a basic parade routine and at least one set routine but some teams have more, picking the best set routine for the space that they are performing in.

Here’s some male dancers from one of the teams that performed in Kawasaki, Kusunokiren (くすのき連) from Ota Ward (大田区) in southern Tokyo. Kusunoki is the Japanese name for the Camphor tree, the official tree of Ota. The team has its origin in the Ward Office, which means that most members are public officials or staff at the local government offices.

Now, if you’re female and looking for a boyfriend in Japan I recommend getting an awaodori dancer like one of these! These guys are powerful and have a tremendous amount of energy compared to most other guys. Don’t go for perfectionist photographers or people who spend all their lives online! You might not know if just from these photos, but the male dance is incredibly energetic, hour after hour they dance around, jumping, screaming, singing! The basic stance of a male dancer (many females do this dance as well) is very low, in fact the lower the better, which is why foreign dancers have to train even harder. This low, wild, reckless dance contrasts beautifully with the female dance with is tall, stretching, arms up, head held high, noble and graceful. It’s the combination that makes it. But no awaodori would be complete without the music, so I have a drummer and a shamisen player in here as well. There’s usually not enough shamisen players and since their instrument isn’t very loud even a team of four-six shamisen players will get drowned out by a a couple of drummers of flutists. Personally, if I ever joined an awaodori team I would pick up a shamisen and leave the dancing for the really cool guys!