Arm-Dancing Cult
Last night was really weird. It was weirder than the Land Pirates I saw rigging up electric poles at Waseda, weirder than the random mysterious snowball in the Shinjuku street, weirder than homeless men with caged pidgeons for pets. Last night, despite all my inhibitions, I went to Velfarre again with Rachel and Erin. I went because I've started to feel "ki" again... and I can only dance if I've got that little light inside of me. I figured, hell, if I don't have a good time, I'm only out 1000 yen. It was a good choice to go.

I've only ever been to Velfarre on Saturday night before. Saturday is always "Cyber Trance," an event that seems to draw a sundry crowd of teeny-boppers and j-poppers who can no more dance than choose matching clothing. The girls seem to mostly shuffle from foot to foot while the guys flail wildly and will give a shiner to anyone in their way. There's also a certain brand of girl that comes to Cyber Trance who seems to like to dress up tarty just to stand ALL night on the "Ladies Only" platform and totter back and forth from one leg to the other just to be seen. These girls usually come in pairs or triples and dress in heinous and obnoxious matching outfits.

Last night was Friday, so it was NOT Cyber Trance. Friday night features various schools of dance from Reggae to Hip Hop and Salsa to Rave. I knew something was up when it took us a while to get in the door and while waiting, observed that more than the usual number of girls were wearing minis and heels. Last night was an event called "Super Rave" or something like that. When we went to the bathroom to remove our coats, it became obvious that it was actually Super Ho-Bag Night from all the garish and crazy clubwear just barely clinging to the waifish Japanese bimbos powdering themselves in there.

Downstairs the music was actually decent. More danceable than a Saturday. But entering the dancefloor was like infiltrating a secret cult. We were the ONLY gaijin in the place and we were crashing a party where EVERYONE knew the same dance.

Yes, the same dance. Literally. Not the Macarena, not the Electric Slide but the same, extended, unified dance moves.

Imagine walking onto the set of a music video and being the only one to have NO CLUE. Yeah.

The club had set up extra dance platforms tiered in a circle all around the floor for the ladies. And the ladies had flocked to them like vain, badly dressed sheep. But these neon sheep still knew something that we didn't... some secret dance move that somewhere, someone had taught them and they'd practiced.

In the center of the floor, the men danced facing each other in unison. On the outskirts of the floor stood loners women who couldn't get a place on the platform. All around the floor, on three or four towering levels, girls dressed in garters, teddies, hotpants, tube tops, garish glitteries and boas all moved their arms in unison.

It was WEIRD. Really. WEIRD.

So weird, that for a while we didn't know whether to crash their party by dancing our own way or to try and figure out a way to dance along.

Mind you, it wasn't like they were dancing to ONE NUMBER and then doing their own thing. After a while, I guessed they had about six or seven different moves that they knew and would repeat them depending on the music. This brought to mind several questions: 1) WHY? 2) Who decides what move to do? 3) When/Where the hell do they practice?

Like I said, we were the only foreigners. No one looked or stared at us but I'm sure we stood out like sore thumbs.

Eventually, I both mastered a few moves and decided that I didn't really care about mastering any moves at all. Compared with the Saturday crowd's dance skills, last night was shocking... and yet looking at any dancer individually it was easy to see that no one really FELT or CARED ABOUT the music. They simply knew the moves and did them. These "moves" were straight out of the seventies or eighties and mostly consisted of various patterns of flinging about the arms in sweeping gestures and patterns that resembled air-craft flag semiotics. The best part was that there would be occasions that the music would stop or change and then no one knew what move to do so they would all just STOP and STAND like helpless little sheep.

We felt so dirty dancing our hearts out.

Finally, a few groups of gajin guys showed up and (for once) I was actually relived to see them. It was great to watch them look as shocked at the uni-dancing as we were. They didn't attempt the dance floor at all (and this after their 3000 yen cover!) but rather stood in a stupor and watched.

Then, the apparent CLIMAX of the evening was that various dancing groups (all pros in the fabulous ARM DANCING school) performed for the THRONGING crowd on stage! The truth is, these dancers all looked hilariously amateurish and resembled every other j-pop dancers I've ever seen. And the crowd stood hushed and still in silence. They were, of course, being reverent and actually HAD been waiting for the performance... but we hooted and clapped and danced and generally had a great time being blasphemous because no one else seemed to realize it was OK to dance along.

I loved it.

It was absurd, hilarious, weird, amazing, obnoxious, freaky and generally COMPLETELY JAPANESE. I felt like we'd walked into something completely uninvited (hey, it was open to the public) and made ourselves at home. In fact, during the little "performance" interlude, we scored ourselves a place on the lower platform and parked ourselves there to dance along "arm-dance style" until Erin and Rachel had to go.

I'm glad I made it out alive and not brainwashed by the arm-dancing cult. But I don't think I would ever do it again.