Awaodori in Kanagawa

Awaodori is a type of Japanese dance which started in Shikoku, but I had a chance to see a big Awaodori festival in Kanagawa recently.

I have seen many types of traditional Japanese dance, but Awaodori was especially interesting. The dance involves men who bend their legs down to a type of half squat, and sometimes a long Japanese style lantern that they carry. The dancers seem as if they are drunk, or at least a little tipsy… Because they walk crossing their legs each step, with their feet pointed in awkward angles. The dance flows to a steady rhythm, but near the end of the dance the drums speed up, and the dance gets wild and faster. To add to the silly atmosphere, sometimes the men have colorful towels tied on their head, but the font of the towel is tied strangely under their nose! In one of the dances, the male dancer was twisting his mouth and scrunching his face making silly faces during the entire performance.

The female dancers are in geta for Awaodori, but during awaodori the dancer always walks on with the geta tilted forward. Not perfectly on their toes like a ballerina, but the wood supports on geta will allow them to be tipped, and the front of the geta will touch the ground. Next time you put on a geta tip forward and you’ll understand the concept. The dancers also are wearing a straw hat, but the hat looks as if it was a flat round straw mat, that has been folded down the middle and placed on the dancers head in an steep downward angle. Usually the hats are so tilted that you cannot even see the faces of the dancer. While dancing on the edges of their geta, the women have their hands straight up in the air, with their hands and fingers doing interesting movements to the music.

There was also one more dance in which 2 men pretended to be kites, and one man was pretending to be the man on the ground launching them and controlling them with strings. The kite actors had their arms straight out holding their coats out taut so they actually did look as if they might fly off anytime. They were spinning wildly, while the man on the ground fought with the “strings” to control them. One time when things went wrong the kites both crashed to the ground and the men were lying on the pavement.

There is famous saying for awaodori that translates roughly into “The people who are dancing are silly, the people who are watching are silly, if you’re the same silly person, there’s nothing to lose if you dance!”

踊るアホ〜に見るアホ〜、同じアホなら踊らにゃソンソン♪

正しい表記かどうか確認してみたら、
阿波踊りの公式ＨＰには

「踊る阿呆に見る阿呆同じ阿呆なら踊らにゃ損々」

とありました。念のため。↓公式ＨＰの一部

Awaodori!