Chapter 11 Even When You’re Weak…
The long term finally came to an end and we prepared for Christmas. The school social was a much quieter affair this time around and they had booked a normal band. Okemia and her parents had gone away for a few days and didn’t attend and Aiko and I ended up dancing with several boys from the fifth year that she had made friends with and I had a good time.
We had a big group of singers now and split into six smaller ones to cover the singing at the shops, aged care homes and hospitals. I think that the school will keep the tradition going well after I have moved on. The final term was hard with the exams but I sailed through them and the gymnastic team was beaten in the rhythmic section, much to the horror of everyone. I could see that the other school had employed an ex-competition winner at national level so we either had to move up a notch or accept our new place in things. I think there was much discussion between the administrators before they decided that we should be happy the way we worked but there was the usual advice; ‘Maybe you should try harder!’
The other thing that made the school year end well was that the new Honey Popcorn videos had hit the social media with a bang. The post production editing had been perfect and they were a riot of colour and movement from beginning to end and the overhead shots fitted beautifully. The girls had sent us a dozen framed and autographed pictures with a thank you to the Senri Flames written on them as well. It was enough for one each plus one that the school hung in the foyer and one we hung in the rehearsal room. The fact that the ten of us shared the payment went down well.
Aiko had now graduated and would be going to the Osaka University of Economics next term in the next prefecture from us so it was an easy train trip for her. I started my last year at this school feeling a bit sad as Okemia was not my girlfriend any more. She had started going out with one of the boys in her new stream and my Raven costume stayed in my closet. I was now sixteen and the hormones were working very nicely and my new body was starting to be noticed by the boys. I bit the bullet and started to go out with Tadashi, one of our dancers, and found myself really feeling like a girl. He was kind and a little in awe of me but he kissed well and we cuddled a lot in the pictures. He made me feel weak at the knees when he caressed my body and kissed my breasts but we did not go any further until later in the year when I gave him the oral relief he wanted. He then moved on to another girl, leaving me devastated.
The school year was busy for the dance team. In the first term we had a call from my manager that he had a ten girl group who needed to have a new video made and had decided that they would do it here, in Osaka. They sent us clips they had already made and we worked out a routine for them with ten of our dancers. They came and stayed and we spent a week taking them through the routine, made much easier by each one having one of our dancers to give pointers. In the end they spent a week in the studio recording the video and then wanted us to join them in a take. It was a rush to put ten outfits together that were close to theirs but we did spend a day with our ten dancers doubling the size of the group and working as twins to each member. That video was the one that went viral and we had some more income to be split and another signed photo each for the collection.
The long term saw another two groups come our way using a similar method. The Osaka studio was getting quite a reputation and our photo collection was growing. With both of the groups there were five singers and we rotated our dancers so that as many as possible got their names out there.
I was walking through the normal exams and my ballet was coming along well. I soon realised that I did not have the grace to be a solo artist but did quite well in the corps. The ballet class put on a display at the Christmas social with an act from Swan Lake and I thought it was lovely, although it had been hard work. Miss Kikuo was thanked for her input.
My last term was full-on with exams but we did have time for another group to work with. These were all very girly and their costumes were usually long flowing dresses and one of the tracks that they sent to us included an instrumental piece in the middle that sounded almost like ballet music. I conferred with Miss Kikuo and she agreed to help with this one. We ended up with ten of our dancers and five of the ballet class. Our ten worked with the moves for the majority of the songs we had been given and the ballet girls were given a crash course in J-Pop to work on just the one song. It took two weeks in the rehearsal room with the group to sort everything out and ten days in the studio but we ended up with a set of normal J-Pop videos plus one that went absolutely viral as soon as it hit the screens.
I had worked out simple moves for the bulk of the track with a lot of spinning that made the skirts swirl. We recorded the whole song a couple of times that way and then everyone was changed into ballet dresses with skirts that would extend horizontally with a good spin and we recorded it again. I had the five singers in red outfits and the rest of the dancers in white and the centre, instrumental section, had them all swirling haphazardly but coming together in the last ten seconds with the red dresses in the middle and the fifteen in white surrounding them, our five ballet girls closest. From above it became a depiction of the national flag. The post production was again spot-on and we had our first national number one hit and I was well on my way to a professional career as a choreographer.
After the exams the school put on a party for all the dancers and their families as a big thank you for our work over the last few years. It was quite an evening and I danced a lot and shed a few tears with my friends. The four of us were going to the University of Arts next term, Tamura and Masuko with me in the dance stream and Okemia in the direction stream. I knew that there were enough younger dancers coming along who would take over and a couple had shown real flair with choreography, but without my sense of movement, yet. The school gave me a framed citation to thank me for my input into the school and I cried a bit when I held it.
The University was only different in that I needed to go further each day and it had a much bigger studio and rehearsal rooms on site. They already knew of me and my orientation day was taken up with interviews with some high powered lecturers. They were prepared to let me do my thing with groups, even to the point of recording them on site and putting them up in the university accommodation. This university had a lot of very well-known alumni and they were determined that I would join their ranks.
So I became immersed in learning more about dance, being exposed to several different styles as well as getting more J-Pop groups going through our system. Tamura and Masuko became assistant choreographers and we put together a group of another fifteen dancers that had come in from other schools but had all been eager to join us. We worked on a wide range of dances, presenting them at University evening shows and, in the first term, had four J-Pop groups with us.
We did record them in the university studio but all wanted the main one in Osaka to do the videos for release. One of our new dancers was a lovely girl called Mitsuki Tachabana and we looked like sisters, although I was certain we could not be. I did ask my father about it and he told me that there were a lot of Tachabanas in Japan and it was quite likely we shared common ancestors. She and I got on like a house on fire and she blended well with us so we promoted her to an assistant as well.
I had been given a big office to share with my three friends and we soon had a line of signed photos on our wall. The university couldn’t do enough for us as we forged ahead creating new works and producing the backing for hit songs. Then the world caved in with the virus and we had the rug pulled out from under us in many ways. It was hard times at first but, if there is one thing you can do while social distancing it is modern dance. We put together a regime of cleanliness and attention to detail and the first year of the pandemic had us producing some of our most avant-garde works, sadly just to video. Halfway through the year I turned eighteen and we had a small party at home. Aiko was doing much of her university work on remote zoom so was home quite a bit. My father still went into his work but he took a lot of care when travelling. Mother just enjoyed us being around.
In the second term of my second year we took the subject of the virus on board and produced a dance called ‘Masks’. In it we had all the dancers, in a line, standing apart, with their backs to the camera. When they turned they all had masks on with lips painted on them. We were all in this shot with a fixed camera. As the dance progressed we took turns on the camera and there were plenty of shot changes as the image on the masks changed, getting more and more animal like. Then there was a segment where we moved around on hands and legs, the masks now all depicting snarling creatures. There was fighting and clawing, in a stylised way with the dancers falling, one by one, and their masks now showing a skeleton jaw.
The final shot was a single dancer, Mitsuki, who had a mask that had a big grin painted on it with red tipped fangs and in the very last seconds we zoomed in and she closed her eyes to show evil red eyes painted on her eyelids. It took a lot of work and a lot of time but we all had a lot of fun doing it while trying to remain socially distant. It was very hard not to hug each other when we viewed the final cut. One of our boy dancers, a strapping lad called Benjiro, had played keyboard with a band so we added a soundtrack with him on synthesiser and conforming the music to the dance, rather than the other way round.
We sent it to the lecturer for evaluation and immediately got an email saying that we all had an ‘A’ and that he wanted to release it for public viewing through one of our alumni in the TV industry. He asked us what the name was that we wanted to be known as and we had a group discussion. One of the dancers put up the suggestion that it should be ‘The Tachabanas’, seeing that it was my choreography. In the end we said that the dance troupe was to be ‘The Osaka Bananas’.
Marianne G 2021
