During dinner, we heard the sound of taiko drums. That meant that they were dancing the traditional festival odori dances at the Hakusangaoka matsuri festival. I grabbed my video camera and we headed down the street to record the event.

Odori are danced in a circle around a raised stage and drummers. The motions are fluid—arms up to one side, sway to the other side, out in font, clap twice; step back, forward, forward, turn—and pretty easy to follow even when you don’t know them as long as you keep your eye on someone who knows the dance.

I know one dance and parts of some of the others. When they played the music for “my” dance, I was busy filming some little kids in yukata. A few songs later, several rather effeminate men tried to persuade me to dance, but the video camera was my albatross. I could imagine it flying across the crowd and landing in a crumpled heap.

So I didn’t dance, but I was consoled later on when the taiko sensei invited me to play with his sticks. He showed me how to hold them to strike an imaginary drum and how to twirl them. Tod was encouraged to play the brass gong during one of the songs, though he didn’t keep the rhythm quite the same as the original song… Posted by kuri at September 03, 2000 08:04 AM