春パ

A video from my dance event. The big pay off so to speak, but I don't have the whole thing, so when I get it, I'll be sure to upload it again.

Enjoy!

UPDATE: 6/15 Here's the whole video!!!





The event, Harupa, was at Studio Coast in Shin-kiba, aka Ageha where I've partied with several of the G-Splash exchange students before. It was a blast. A very loud, very long, very visually assaulting blast. It started at 1:30 and we were the first group to go after a short opening dance act that involved half-naked men. Unfortunately, I missed that one, but....

As you can imagine after watching the video, it all went by really really quickly. I see now why they made us practice it so many times. With all of the lights and the adrenaline and the crowd, all thought quickly vanishes from your head. I'm pretty sure all of us got through that dance solely on muscle memory.

After we danced, we quickly ran back out to the audience area to cheer on the rest of the group and watch the dance as well. All in all a superb experience. The rest of the day, we could spend as long as we liked at the event watching other groups. Several of the members in G-Splash were in second groups. Jen and I were pretty amazed by that. I was sitting next to her at the time and we couldn't help remarking on how crazy their lives must be being in two dance groups. We thought G-Splash took up a lot of time, but imagine that doubled.


I'll take a moment here to backtrack about how much time G-Splash actually filled during our weeks. The first two weeks that we joined, we had practice everyday and then an :"audition" at the end, where everyone proceeded to be accepted. Then we had to choose our genres, either hip-hop or pop and lock, and we had practice for these twice a week. After a while we had the regular practices plus a second extra mandatory practice that we all had to go to. Then as the date for Harupa drew nearer, we had practice everyday and on Saturdays from 11 to 8 or something ridiculous.

So, all of those members in other dance groups did all of that, plus whatever crazy commitments they had for their second dance group. Insane, I know.

There were several really good performances, however. One about a train stopping post (the word in English escapes me right now) who falls in love with a school girl who always crosses the tracks. But she's in a relationship with this jerk. So some magic guy gives the post a potion to drink and he becomes human only to sacrifice himself for the girl's jerkish boyfriend who nearly gets run over by a train during a big fight with the girl. Because he wasn't really human to being with, the post turns back into a post, but at the end of the dance, the girl gives him back his hat, a prop that was central to the story, and kisses him on the cheek. It was all really cute, but unfortunately I didn't have my camera with me so I don't have a video of that one.

The night of Harupa, we had a nomi kai and it was really cool. We got to chat it up with our sempais who are usually really distant and strict. Turns out it was all a facade. The picture to the right is of me and my sempais A-ko and Tombo. His nickname comes from Kiki's Magic Delivery Service. If you've seen it, you know he looks like the Tombo in the movie and he sounds like him too. I mean, we knew they seemed really cool, but after talking with them, we knew it first hand that we were in the presence of some pretty cool kids.

Although, our G-Splash experience to date has been really intense, I think Harupa and the nomi-kai afterwards, made it all worth it.