dance

Of all the cool dance videos we’ve seen this summer, the one by the Dancing Strawhats and Koharu Sugawara was perhaps our favorite. The video did an excellent job of mixing contemporary dance and music with traditional scenery and clothing, and it was this juxtaposition that really captured our attention.

A new video by another group of contemporary dancers has captured our attention today, but this time it features Kiyomizu-dera, one of Japan’s most famous temples, and some lovely music by an incredibly talented koto player. We are in love with this video and we bet you will be too!

Kiyomizu-dera isn’t exactly what we normally think of when we think of contemporary dance, but the temple is actually known for its support of arts the arts. And we imagine they’re a bit more lenient about letting people dance their hearts out after the doors are closed to the public at night, like when this video was filmed at the beginning of August!

The video stars Laurent and Larry Bourgeois, better known as Les Twins, a pair of dancing French twins who you may already know thanks to the popularity of their hip-hop dancing.

▼ A one-take dance video to “Lips Are Movin'”

Accompanying the duo on koto was Yumi Kurosawa, a New York-based Japanese koto player whose instrument of choice is a 20-string koto.

▼ Kurosawa performing solo at the Concert for Japan in 2011

The Instagram photo below of Les Twins dancing in the temple as the sun sets behind them perfectly captures the mood and spirit of the video—beautiful and fascinating. It also provides a bit of background about the temple and the video!

We have to say that we’re loving all these videos melding the contemporary and the traditional. We’re really hoping that “koto and hip-hop dance videos” will become the next big YouTube thing. After all, unlike cowbell, you can never have too much koto!

Image: YouTube (Kiyomizu-dera)
[ Read in Japanese ]