Thumping start for Yosakoi

YOSAKOI! (meaning “come on over tonight” in Japanese), and more than 15,000 people answered the call to the first Yosakoi Parade held in Penang.

Spectators packed the route from Beach Street to the Esplanade as 26 dance groups, featuring more than 300 dancers, performed along the streets to hot music pumping out of speakers. Every few hundred metres apart, the dancers would find another set of sound system playing their song and another crowd of spectators waiting to be entertained.

Beat it: Japanese drummers delighting the audience with their stage performance at the Esplanade.

All in, the dance groups stopped to perform for the crowd four times before reaching the Esplanade during the Saturday do. Some of the performances were not dances but martial art demonstrations or costume parades.

The Yosakoi Parade has been a tradition since 1954 celebrated in the tiny Kochi Perfecture of Shikoku Island, Japan. The event in Japan attracts over 35,000 dancers and a million visitors every year.

The parade is organised by Pink Hibiscus Club together with the Japanese Consulate, Penang Municipal Council and Penang Global Tourism.

At the Esplanade, nearly 100 vendors busily sold their wares, from food to souvenirs and toys, while a section of the carnival dubbed Ninja Castle offered lots of fun and games for adults and children. Beautifully clad geishas traipsed around the grounds, happily posing for photographs with anyone who asked.

Popular backdrop: Geishas posing in front of Japanese lanterns at the Yosakoi Carnival at the Esplanade.

Even more sensational were the presence of cosplay characters — Jack Sparrow, Kiriko, Rikku, Luffy the Pirate, Mario, Baja Hitam and several others — from the Malaysian Cosplay Toshokan group posed for photographs with their fans.

Visitors also had the pleasure of experiencing the Japanese practice of laying straw mats on the field and settling down to enjoy stage performances. The organisers had readied hundreds of straw mats for rent. “We are happy to have brought the Yosakoi Parade to Penang for the first time and we will definitely organise it again next year,” said organising chairman Emi Yamazaki.

While Penangites enjoyed themselves, a few admitted they were a little unaccustomed to this unique style. “We thought they would do a dance procession along the street, but instead, most of the dancers merely performed in one place before walking further along the street.

“This made it hard for many of us to see the dances because so many spectators would throng around the dancers,” said spectator Ben Woon who brought his children to the parade. She noted that crowd control had been a little challenging.

“The crowd packed so close to the dancers that some of the groups had too little space to dance well. “Next year, we will prepare barricades along the street to keep spectators from walking into the way of the parade,” she added.

Yamazaki, who is also the president of the Pink Hibiscus Club, said the inspiration to bring the Yosakoi Parade to Penang was to share her culture with Penangites.

-thestar online.