Stock photos of Japan, Japanese culture, and life
You are currently browsing articles tagged dance.
The annual Nagoya Dance Festival, locally known as the Nagoya Domatsuri, was held again this weekend. For details and history of the event, see this previous blog post about the Domatsuri. Whilst photos are still being processed you can browse last years photos, below.
Nagoya Domatsuri – Images by Andrew Blyth
Also, to whet your appetite, here is a video…
Next weekend is the Nagoya Dance Festival, or ‘Domatsuri’. I’ll be attending. Usually it’s either extraodinarily hot and sunny, and terrible to photograph in; or wet, humid, hot and terrible to photograph in. Wish me luck this year. The Nagoya dance festival is not a traditional town festival, nor traditional dance event. It was modelled on the Hokkaido event that the Nagoya university students attended, and were impressed by. Consequently, because of the Hokkaido influence, there are Sino-Japanese style dances, rock/pop influences, as well as more traditional or jazzed-up styles as well. It’s dynamic, and a feast for the eye. I always love to see the Kyoto University teams, they have time and depth-of-knowledge to dedicate in their preparations for this event. This is a must see for all tourists visiting Nagoya at this time of year.
My blurb for PhotoShelter portfolio gallery (shown below)
The Nagoya Dance Festival competition, known locally as Domatsuri is an annual summer event held at the end of August. Domatsuri was first organised by university students in 1999, and later taken over by the city. It now attracts over 200 teams with over 20,000 participants, with an audience of nearly 2 million viewers.?
As you can see it’s a big event, and a very big deal. More information can be found at the Domatsuri webpage (in English). Below is the gallery available on my PhotoShelter portfolio, but more is also available at Asia Photo Connection (13 images available, see pages 5-6).
Nagoya Domatsuri – Images by Andrew Blyth
Tags: competition, dance, domatsuri, festival, japan, japanese, matsuri, nagoya, summer, traditional
A performer of Tado Gagaku (a traditional Japanese performance troupe) performing at Rokka En (Kuwana Mansion)
A big thanks to Shu’uchi (pictured right) for letting me know about this performance. It was great to get the invite and to see Tado Gagaku perform again. This performance was again held at Rokka En (Kuwana Mansion). The first performances were musical, and were held inside the mansion itself, in the Japanese style quarter (the building includes a Victorian-style quarter). Once this indoor performance was done, the audience were then invited to move to the large windowed-doors to view this outdoor performance (seen below), from the warmth and comfort of the building. Some images are now available at Asia Photo Connection (Henry Westheim).
A performer of Tado Gagaku (a traditional Japanese performance troupe) performing at Rokka En (Kuwana Mansion)
Tags: dance, gagaku, japanese, music, musical instruments, performance, tado gagaku, traditional
A few weeks ago I saw a wonderful performance. Tado Gagaku is a traditional Shinto-related performance troupe. They have both actor-dancers and musicians. The Tado Gagaku performs two or three times a year. This time, they performed at Kuwana Mansion, known locally as Roka-En (Roka Park).The performances are done outdoors on a temporary stage. On this particular day, it was cold, rain threatened, miserable, and the lighting was less than par. But, the people were really nice. I was fortunate enough to get some model releases. 
There are several performances done in the course of two hours. Some are solo performances, some were group performances, in some the performers wore masks, but they all wore wonderful costumes. The musicians played all Japanese court instruments.
All images are available at Asia PhotoConnection / Henry Westheim.
Tags: actor, actors, dance, gagaku, kuwana, music, musical, performance, performers, shinto, tado, traditional