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Para
para dancing
A
popular dance in Japan travels to Asia
While
Japanese people have danced for centuries and these dances
are still popular in their slightly modernized form, there
are other dances that are quite foreign to Japanese culture.
The younger people are embracing a large variety of dances
in clubs that are similar to what you would see in the west.
One exception, however, is the para-para that has
taken over Japan and rest of Asia-Pacific region as did
disco during the bubble economy. In fact a movie has
been made in Hong Kong using para para as the central theme
and this has played a critical role in popularizing this
dance further. The dance is based on Eurobeats but has
a unique Japanese flavor to it in terms of the critical role
of hand movements.
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The
dance has attracted so much attention that
Tokyo Disneyland has a sequence using Mickey Mouse
dancing to para-para
and the latest humanoid robot from
Sony can do the
para-para
dance apart from dozens of other tricks.
Remember
that dancing the para-para is not easy. There
are hundreds of moves that have to be memorized and there is
little scope for changing these as each moment in the song
has a movement associated with it. The overall
movement of the body is rather limited and hands and arms
are the body parts most active. Since dance movements
are difficult, only the serious dancers climb onto the stage
while others just watch them or move at their will following
the dancers on stage.
(Related: iPod
docking station)
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 While
the dance itself is not new, its recent revival has been
interesting. The dance is even more interesting since
the popularity of the dance is confined to young adults.
A typical dance club for para-para is packed with
kogals, Japanese teenagers who will embrace anything
that will make them look cool among their peers. Since
the dance is a combination of Japanese and non-Japanese
dance forms, it is easy for everyone to enjoy it even if
they do not fully understand the movements. There are
several people who think that this dance borrows heavily
from the movements of bon-odori, which is a more traditional
dance in Japan. (Related:
Stacy Keibler)
If
you happen to visit one of the para-para dance clubs
in Japan, what you will find is a small dance floor packed
with blonde kogals, dressed in micro mini skirts,
fishnet stockings, tank tops,
platform boots,
designer hand bags, and other bizarre fashion items as
see-through or sheer dresses, white
lipstick or
blue contact lenses or false fingernails. Of
course, there are guys, but far fewer and it is mostly the
professional types who have developed a high level of
proficiency in the dance and can use it to
impress these girls, who would fall for a dancer any
time.
Nothing
in Japan these days lasts forever. The fads among
young people change every other week and para-para
may be just one of these. This may not be the way how
some young Japanese think though. Ruri Chabatake, a
17-year Japanese kogal, says, " I can dance over 30
para-para. Some people say that para-para
and kogals are stupid and dumb, but I don't think so.
I have blond hair, I wear micro
mini skirts and very high
platform shoes, but I'm just being myself!!"
Leon
Alexander, a Brazilian/West Indian, who lives in UK and has a
Japanese girlfriend, has traveled to Japan to try para-para
first hand. He writes, "This will make you all laugh
because I actually fainted due to all the rapid hand movements
flowing past me faster than the speed of light. Tons of
women standing before me.
Blondes everywhere as far as my eyes could see. Platforms
too high to be measured. This was too much for me even
though I tried to get into the para-para scene, being used to
normally dancing to salsa tunes among one of many types of music
which I'm into; para-para wasn't one of them. I like
Japanese pop, like the group 'Porno Graffiti' for instance
because they rock. Even the dance group 'Denki Groove' are some
of the type of
music you would definitely find me dancing to in Japanese
clubs. I'll give the para-para one more try after I
started listening to the tune (Agehachou). Now I can
somehow find myself doing it. To all my fellow students at
the University of North London, mock me if you must but I can't
help myself, I'm going do it till I cant move my hands anymore
next June."
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