Owara-kaze-no-mai (おわら風の舞)

On September 17, the “Owara-kaze-no-mai (おわら風の舞)” event was held in Hachioji.

On the day, we gathered at the Kenban, the geisha office, at noon in order to rehearse.
Up until then, we had been practicing the Owara dance from a recorded tape.
However on that day, one Kokyu player, 4 shamisen players, and 3 singers came to the Kenban, where Hachioji’s geisha rehearsed to their live performance.

The rehearsal finished around 2pm.

The “Owara-kaze-no-mai event was held in 2 parts; one in the afternoon and the other in the evening.
After the rehearsal, we went to the venue.
At the afternoon event, the audience could dance with dancers. It was like a Bon-odori (盆踊り).

After the afternoon part had finished, Hachioji’s geisha, the kokyu and shamisen players, and singers went to a hotel to eat dinner. It was the customary dinner held every year at this event.

The main part of the event was the evening event.

Unfortunately, around dinner time, light rain started falling. We became anxious because if it rained the event would be cancelled.

At 6pm, the starting time of the evening event, it began to rain heavily.
Everybody waited for the rain to stop.

At first, there was an announcement that the evening event would be cancelled.
However, soon after the announcement, it suddenly stopped raining, so the event went ahead as planned.

Originally, Hachioji’s geisha were scheduled to dance on the outdoor stage at 6:30pm,
but this was changed and instead we danced and paraded through the streets, and also danced on some street corners. We dance differently on the street corners compared to when we parade through the streets.

After the parade, we went to the outdoor stage where we had originally planned to dance, but nobody was waiting there. People must have thought that the event had been cancelled and already gone home.
In spite of a lack of an audience Hachioji’s geisha started dancing on the stage.
Some people started to gather to see our performance.

At this year event the organisers decided to try something different.

They decided to use many candles around the geisha area. The candles were put into bamboo containers which were then set up in the streets.

Originally, the Owara event is a local event that came from Yatsuo-city, which is located in Toyama prefecture. In Yatsuo-city’s Owara event, the lightning is quite dark and the atmosphere is very special.

In Hachioji, the organisers wanted to model the “Owara-kaze-no-mai” after the original Owara event.

The organisers of the event asked the local restaurant owners to turn off their signboards during the event so that the atmosphere of the candles would be more beautiful.
To dance surrounded by the candles was very fantastic.
I think it was nice all the hard work of the organisers paid off to create such a fantastic event.