KSU Yosakoi kicked off the semester with a table at the Winter Expo, a place for old and new students to come see what types of interest groups, clubs and organizations are available on campus. Micah, Fritzi, Greta and Donna helped out with the table, which was located in the Union food court. A lot of students stopped by to talk, see videos of Yosakoi performing and sign up for information about the club. About seven people signed up for further information about the club.
This week, KSU Japanese Dance Club participated in Kansas State’s Homecoming Week. This is a time when the Greek Houses, residence Halls, and Students Organization come together in the spirit of the college through a myriad of fun events.
This year we participated in the 5k Run, Sidewalk Chalk, Spirit Banner, Paint the ‘Ville, Kid’s Carnival, and the Parade. The team came together this week in these events and excelled in all events we participated in. For Sidewalk Chalk, Historian Ching Her created and led the design of Wille the Wildcat riding Colorado University’s Buffalo “Ralphie” like a bronco. Sectrarty Greta Kliewver organizted the Spirit Banner and Kid’s Carnival. Paint the ‘Ville was organized by our Publicity Chair Jordan Mizell. Special tanks to all the captains who worked on the parade and dances for the Homecoming week.
The parade, being the highlight, started at the Manhattan Mall and ended in Aggieville. The dancers did a fabulous job and everyone was full of genki! We were a small group this year, but all the viewers were happy to see us once again.
Here is this year’s rankings:
Sidewalk Chalk: 1st Place
Spirit Banner: 1st Place
Paint the ‘Ville: 1st Place
Parade: 2nd Place
Overall: 2nd Place
Saturday Sept. 19, 2009
This year’s performance at the Greater Japan Festival was incredible! The festival celebrated its 12th annual festival with Taiko, Bonsai, Eisa, and Yosakoi. This is one of our groups favorite festival to perform at because the audience always has high energy and wants to learn more about culture. We did reunite with other performing groups and with former alumni of our group.
We started the festival off with our Dancing workshop were we taught Yocchore. The group of eager dancers were great and had quite a bit of energy. After that, we had our first afternoon performance in Yardley Hall, where we performed Soran-Bushi and Yochchore. The audience was excited and the dances were great. Then we had our evening performance also in Yardley Hall, were we finished off with Samurai and Net De Yosakoi. Both were a solid finish to a great day of performances.
To finish off the day, we went to the new Japanese restaurant “Edoko” at 87th and Pflumm. Food was great and we ate huge platters of sushi. This has been from our experience of the busiest festivals in recent memory. It proved to be a blast and all members loved the festivals and all the dances.
The Yosakoi group were highlighted as guests of honor at Naka-kon 2009. This Anime convention, which is hosted annually, took place this year at the Hyatt hotel in the Crown Center shopping area. Yosakoi members enjoyed an early-morning roadtrip to the hotel, where they registered and had lunch before teaching a workshop. Four members of the team taught Soran Bushi to Naka-con participants while QiuXia vocalized the different steps and ran the music.
After dinner at Kabuki, a Japanese restaurant inside Crown Center, the team returned to the convention and performed 3 dances during an exhibition of Anime costumes and Japanese culture. This was Yosakoi’s debut of the dance Net de Yosakoi. After the performance, while judges were deciding the results of the costume contest, Yosakoi was asked to come back onstage. The group performed Yocchore as a finale to the evening’s performance. After an exhausting but enjoyable day, Yosakoi returned to Manhattan, having debuted their new dance to an enthusiastic audience in a new venue.
Ching, Cami, and Jordan traveled to Wamego to provide a Yosakoi workshop at the annual Wamego Middle School (WMS) Fine Arts Fair on March 7, 2009. WMS students had the opportunity to experience many different workshops including Yosakoi and ranging from a photographer to a jazz band. The three Yosakoi members did six workshop sections for the students and taught them a variety of songs and a brief description of Yosakoi. It was an exhausting and tiring day to teach Yosakoi for four hours straight, but we throughly enjoyed working with and teaching the students.
The Wamego Times even caught a glimpse of our workshop and took a photo of us which happened to land the front page! (Link and picture coming soon!!! )
K-State Yosakoi 