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[RUSH TRANSCRIPT AND CAPTIONS.] [WARNING: MAY CONTAIN TRANSCRIPTION ERRORS.]
[inaudible] Let's walk in.
... Yosakoi dancing, and their name is DC Yosakoi Yankees. So let's now welcome them out.
[clapping and chatter]
[command in Japanese] [music begins]
[music]
[cheering and clapping]
Announcer: Thank you, that was great. And now, uh...[inaudible]
Announcer: ... I'll leave that up to you, basically. So... you're from Tokyo. Where did you get the dance routine?
Risa: First of all, thanks so ... eve... ryone... and thanks so much to the dancers. We only had five practice. And none of them had the experience of dancing this dance. Yosakoi is a traditional dance... They have more than 100 varieties.
It depends on what variety you choose, and this particular dance came from Hokkaido. It's called Nanchu Yosakoi. And Nanchu is one of the middle school names in Hokkaido area. What happened is that the school had a bad reputation in the area.
And kids were not disciplined. So, one of the teachers at the school decided to have some kind of activity so that the kids can get involved and the teacher thought that would make the kids quiet.
So he started doing this with the kids in the class, and it actually worked, so the word just spread in the Hokkaido area. And now people know about this dance and they do this.
So we wanted to do this as Japanese traditional dance, and people in the group, there is Jessicalind...[inaudible]
... [inaudible, listing other team members' names, including Naomi and Robert] And so here are this team and we met very part time and none of them came to all of the practices. Only once, maybe twice... yeah. [inaudble interjection from team]
[inaudible] Very hard ... we have full time jobs, ... we have students... [inaudible] ... it was Thanksgiving holiday some time...
or... it was very hard, but we did our best. And now, we are trying to re-form this group for the Cherry Blossom Festival next year. So anybody here, you can be our team. So if you are interested in dancing with us next year,
... just let us know or check our web site for updates. So thank you so much.
Announcer: Thank you very much. It was tiring just watching you guys. I think Robert here has something he'd like to say.
Robert: Thanks very much. I don't know if anyone seen [..., inaudible; Japan mentioned] movie in 1996 [...], Shall We Dance. It was a big hit. It was so popular that in 2004, Hollywood took it and put Richard Gere in the starring role
and they did it in the United States. And if you turn on the TV these days, you can see all sorts of dance shows. "Dancing With The Stars", "So You Think You Can Dance", or whatever.
There are two things that I think those shows and movies do quite well. And that is they show talented dancers and second thing they show is how hard it is to teach.
I think it's pretty amazing that you can take a football player or actress or ice skater and one week later that person is a great waltzer ... [inaudible] ... or whatever.
But [what?] they don't show is how difficult it is to do choreography, and especially do it well. It's very, very difficult to put a dancer at a certain point on the floor at a certain time in the music, going at
200, 250 beats a minute in the right pose. And then you multiply it by one, two, whatever, and it gets very complicated, very fast.
Well, the Japan-America Society hired somebody that is outstanding in all three of those skills; Risa [inaudible] is a fantastic, uh, dancer, she is a fantastic choreographer, and she is a fantastic teacher, and she was very, very patient with us.
Despite our bad mistakes. So, uh, the team would like to give her a gift, and if you would come up here... [clapping] Thanks very much.
[Rush captions by Jonathan Ah Kit, jonathan@metalab.unc.edu] [ http://www.ibiblio.org/ahkitj/ ]