[Blog] 11th of August

The end of summer gets nearer just as the real summer weather arrive. And it’s time for Zyka to start again.

While the summer holiday has been nice and most likely necessary for all of us it is fun to start again. And most exciting of all it is finally, finally….

 

Time to start to learn Bankuramou!

 

After more than half a year of intense work the time is finally here for the members to learn the choreography. It’s been some time since we learnt something new so it’s fun to get a challenge like this. But also it is something that almost all for us have worked with at least one part of for a long time. To see it all coming together is a very special feeling. I can hardly wait until the costumes are done and the last pieces fall into place! Look forward to our premier on the 18th of October everyone!

But summer also means travel time to many and thus not all of our members are back home yet. For the first training of this season Peanuts and Shishou showed up. And they worked hard! Good work both of you!

Shishou and Peanuts

– 王将

Oushou

 

[Blog] 24th of May

Hi everyone!

The music and choreography for our new dance Bankuramou is now finished! \(^^)/ We have been working hard since November and are very pleased with the results. It’s exciting to have accomplished it, the creation of an entirely new dance with music and choreography that didn’t exist before. But before we start training Bankuramou we still have to have our grand finale Hatsuyuki performance! In yosakoi teams which do their own performances it is custom to close one dance before starting the new one. After closing the old dance it will never be performed again. We want our last Hatsuyuki performance to be the best ever so now we are working on the details, synchronisation and style of the performance.

We also have gotten a new member: Shishou! New members are always exciting, more team mates and more people who wants to dance yosakoi! One of our earlier members, Niisan have also come back and is dancing with us again. It’s nice to be so many people on the trainings! ^^

As per usual in May everyone is busy with school and work before summer comes. But soon we will start training outside again, so lets hope for warmer weather!

– WHOロック？
WHOlock

And finally the time is here!

And thus we present to you, the concept of our new dance;

 

 

万梦猛　- Bankuramou

– Tiotusen drömmars styrka –

– Strength of ten thousand dreams –

 

The dance in itself will be presented during autumn 2015.

We will keep you updated so please look forward to it!

 

 

 

[Blog] 29th of March – Danskarusellen at Nova in Vallentuna

Two days ago, on Friday the 27th of March, we performed at our third Danskarusellen event, this time at Nova in Vallentuna. It took a while to get there, especially for those of our members who live south of Stockholm, but it was all worth it. There was a real stage for us to perform on, and for once it wasn’t all that small. We did end up hitting each other a bit but we have had worse so it really wasn’t much of a problem. Yosakoi need more space than many other dances I think, especially since it’s not very easy to change the places according to the shape and size of the stage. That’s a good thing with still being quite a small team I guess, when we grow bigger (which we hope to do soon, come join us everyone it’s great fun!) we will have even more trouble fitting on small stages.

Anyway, besides us there were many other teams participating in the event. It was fun watching the others’ performances while waiting for our turn, everyone was so good! In Danskarusellen you belong to a group of teams who mostly participate in the same events. This makes it possible for us to see how the different performances in our group get better and better with each performance. It’s also different to see how some teams have completely new choreography while others, like us, only make smaller changes between the events.

Here is our performance from the event. The first part is Hatsuyuki and after that comes a sou-odori medley.

 

Unless we go to the region final, which we yet don’t know if we will, this was our last performance with Danskarusellen. It has been great fun participating and I think it the criticism we have received after each performance has helped us develop as a team. No matter if we go to the final or not we have given our best and had a great time, and for us that is the most important part.

Next up in our schedule is Körsbärsblommansdag in Kungsträdgården in Stockholm. We are planing on doing two new sou-odoris there so look forward to that! We are also continuing to work with our next self-made dance. It’s looking great at the moment and all of us are really excited about it! The theme is set to be presented in May and the dance in the end of summer or beginning of autumn. While it will be sad to put Hatsuyuki behind us it’s going to be fun to have a new dance to show. I can barely wait!

– 王将

Oushou

[Blog] 24th of November

Hi again!

With Christmas coming up we are working hard for our very own Christmas show, Saishuuren! On it we will preform several new dances, both yosakoi and others. It is fun to learn so many new dances, but hectic as we barely have time for it all. The new dances are also not always our usual style but various other styles. It will hopefully broaden our horizons. Personally I’m teaching Zyka a souodouri from Koochi called Minade yosakoi, which in Japanese means something like “Everyone dances yosakoi together”. This is the first time I’m in charge of teaching a dance and it has been quite challenging, in a good way. Everyone is as usual very eager for our next project!

We are also looking for performances for next year, searching for interesting events and situations where we might have a chance.

In the midst of this we have our concept to work on! Never before have I been involved in a project of creating something like this. It’s very creative and I love the team work. For example, I would not be able to create music on my own but as a group we can do it! Very exciting, I’m really expectant for how it’s going to come out.

– WHOロック？

WHOlock

[Blog] 22th of October

We’ve started working on a new concept! It will stay a secret for yet some time, at the moment we are thinking of presenting it sometime next spring, and first performance sometime during the summer following that. So please look forward to that!

The concept is written by one of our members. We actually had four concepts to choose from so the creator of each concept got to present it to the rest of the group and then everyone voted. We are very happy with the one we chose, even if it was sad to have to not choose the other ones. The members were also asked to choose which creator groups they wanted to belong to, choosing between Concept, Costume, Music and Choreography. While there might be changes in the groups later on here is how they look at the moment, the leader of the group marked with a star:
 

Concept – *WHOlock, Oushou

Music – *Amo, Park, WHOlock

Costume – *Iruka?, Peanuts, Oushou

Choreography – *Oushou, Iruka?, Amo

 
There is much that needs to be done but I believe all of us are looking forward to it!

On another note we have started a European Yosakoi Network together with Raiden Yosakoi, a team from the Neatherlands. So far the Polish team Sakuramai Poland has joined but we are doing our best to contact and invite the rest of the European teams as well. Together we have a better chance of spreading Yosakoi in Europe and maybe we can even do some sort of Yosakoi festival or collaboration together at some point!

– 王将

Oushou