Baku Ishii/Tatsumi Hijikata Memorial, International Dance Festival
“ODORU-AKITA” Vol.6 Finalists’ Movies

The “ODORU AKITA Award” competition in “ODORU-AKITA” Vol.6 was open to dancers living in Japan and 10 groups were selected as finalists from a total of 68 entries. The finalists’ performances were scheduled to take place at the Akita City Nigiwai Koryukan AU over two days from October 8th to 9th, 2021.
As we were preparing for the event, coronavirus spread rapidly in Akita city mid-August 2021. This was the time when the Tokyo Olympic Games were being held, and people were called to practice restraint in nonessential traveling across prefectural borders, especially to the Tokyo region, due to the rapid increase in the number of infected people.
This led to worry from the citizens of Akita city and the prefecture in light of this situation. We were no longer in a position to announce that tickets would go on sale on September 1st. It was with great regret that we were forced to abandon our plans to hold the festival in 2021
However, we felt it would be a shame not to be able to show the performances of the finalists, so after consulting with the prefectural government, City Hall and the Agency for Cultural Affairs, we decided to borrow a theater to shoot the finalists’ performances and show them to the public.
The videos uploaded here were shot without a live audience over three days from January 11th to 13th, 2022. Although these are naturally different from a live performance, we have edited them to convey the charm and power of each dancer as much as possible. We hope you will enjoy all of them until the end.
*Please note that four groups out of the ten finalists were unable to participate due to scheduling conflicts.