JapanNewbie

ParaPara Dance on YouTube

Posted on 18. Jul, 2006 @ 2:19 pm by harvey in Media, Music Views: 578

Has everyone hear heard of “Para Para”? Here is a video on YouTube featuring a popular parapara dance instructional video.
Parapara was a type of… “dance”… popular in Japan about one year before I went to study Japanese at Nanzan University in Nagoya so many years ago. Around the time I arrived in Nagoya, my Japanese friends were telling me it was going out of style.

Parapara was mainly done in clubs, by mostly girls, but guys also join in sometimes. The more skillful parapara dancers would climb up on a small stage in front of the club (or a big stage, depends on the club!) and do their parapara dance to the music. These parapara girls would have big hair (extensions), tall boots, and short skirts.
The motions for each parapara song are predetermined, and must be memorized. If you miss a step, you’re not cool. You can purchase tapes and DVD’s in stores to learn the moves for each song, and need to stay updated as new songs are released. Occasionally I would see girls and guys outside in front of department store windows at night, using them as mirrors to practice their steps.

Again, Parapara is pretty much dead now in Japan, my unprofessional guess would put it at about the same level as break dancing in the states. Some people do it, and are pretty hardcore about it, but it is not at all mainstream.

Break dancing is cooler. A bit more… how do you say… Originality between dancers.

- Harvey