The Fisherman Dance

I’ve been teaching after school classes to a small subset of my students in preparation for their trip to Australia next week. Yesterday was my last class with them before they leave. I found out from another teacher that they will be singing and dancing as part of ceremony, so I stayed after to watch them practice. While it was a bit odd to hear their interpretation of Waltzing Matilda, I have to say that I was impressed with the dance they will perform. It’s a great little dance about the fisherman in Hokkaido; all the movements are evocative of fishing and the sea. The dance creates images of schools of fish, casting lines, hauling nets, the waves of the sea, and even a caught fish as it is emerges from the water. Hopefully I can get a video of it when they come back in couple weeks.

As a side bonus, I also got to practice some of the moves with a few students, although I almost got in trouble for making a student laugh too much. To be fair, he started it. He was exaggerating a few of the  kicks in the air while near me, so I pretended that he had just kicked my head off. He had to excuse himself from the practice for a couple minutes to recover and the dance instructor looked at me odd. I just shrugged my shoulders, and tried my best not to look too guilty.