Today was my first performance abroad, so I have made my international debut as a dancer, if you can even call me that. At Penn State, I was involved in PSIDE (Penn State International Dance Ensemble). I felt quite global and cultural doing dances from different lands, but dancing hip hop in Japan is a whole different track. It’s been a roller coaster ride of emotions, to be honest.
The dance club I’ve joined in Japan is called PRIME. Essentially, they are an all girl dance club with multiple groups within. I thought it wouldn’t be too hard core, just a fun extracurricular activity. Apparently speculation is not my strong suit.
We practiced twice a week for about 3-4 hours. Getting the choreography down was a challenge since the girls were clearly well versed in hip hop and didn’t really hold back for us poor international students. The rhythm was hard to understand and the delivery still baffles me even now. The moves are so fast and because of that, each move has to be crisp and neat. Most of the time I felt like I was just flailing limbs instead of hitting moves. 
Not only that, but the language barrier is still pretty high and thick for me, so a lot of the time I didn’t know where we were starting from or even where practice was. Luckily, everyone is so nice and patient that I never felt pressure from them because of my mistakes. Unfortunately, I am not so patient with myself. It’s one thing to not be able to speak since you can get away with having a shy personality. When you don’t understand, however, the other part gets involved and that`s when the guilt sets in. I know they feel pressure to just explain it in English, which they don’t have to, but they always try.
Language aside, we managed and I think it all worked out. Of course I was nervous, but it did not take long for the atmosphere to take hold of me. I wanted to dance bigger and harder and before I knew it, the dance was over. In fact, compared to PSIDE, the routines were rather short–about 2 minutes for the one I was in. I really wanted to perform more, but alas my time was up. There are more performances, but today was the school festival, so it was kind of like being on our home base.
I’d like to thank Shiho for teaching us her dance and Mire for giving me some one on one training. Though it gets difficult and frustrating at times to dance and manage the whole Japanese thing, I’m glad to have such a well rounded opportunity while being surrounded by such lovely people.
Location: Showa-ku, Nagoya-shi, Aichi-ken, Japan
