Arts Activities Support

We were very pleased with a near record attendance this year of 12,000, the second largest gathering for this event on record. The Bon Odori dance program and the other performances were as much a celebration of intercultural ties as a display of Japanese cultural heritage. We will continue to work with the performing groups throughout our community to bring us closer together. The Como Park Japanese Lantern Lighting Festival is modeled after Obon festivals, which are held in August all across Japan to honor the dead, and feature paper lanterns or bonfires. A highlight of these festivals is the bon odori, or folk dance exclusive to the Obon holidays. We invited local musicians, singers, and dancers to lead a bon odori at Como Park as part of an ongoing effort to build an authentic, self-sustaining community-based Japanese folk dance tradition here is Minnesota. In the past, Japan America Society of Minnesota has requested funds for only the Bon Odori program. This has been a successful project for which we appreciate the support of Metropolitan Regional Arts Council. This year, in order to build a stronger entertainment program for the Lantern Lighting Festival, we received a grant for funding to support a larger entertainment offering. It included not only the Bon Odori performance but also performances by other Japan related arts groups in Minnesota. The groups performing were the Chura-Ryukyu Okinawa Sanshinkai (songs and music from Okinawa), Mu Performing Arts (Japanese taiko drummers), Mu-Min (a Japanese chorus) and Mikaharu Kai (a classical Japanese dance troupe), Harisen Daiko (Japanese taiko drummers), Sakura Kai, Sansei Yonsei Kai and Taikollaborative. As it happened, three groups did not perform as planned: Kawa Tatsu Yosakai, the Minneapolis Japanese School, and TaikoAlive. In their place, we added the Ensemble MA group that featured taiko drumming that was well received. The final expense report reflects this change. The funds requested also paid for the rehearsals, a community demonstration at an open house rehearsal for the Bon Odori, and a public performance at the Como Park Lantern Lighting Festival on the evening of Sunday, August 21, 2016. In addition to this traditional performance, a pre-festival demonstration and open house was offered to the community as a way to build excitement and allow community members to gain a more personal and deep understanding of what Minnesota Bon Odori is. The event was held on Monday, July 25th, 2016 at the Christian mission center in Uptown and featured a short demonstration by the artists, a presentation on the Minnesota Bon Odori traditions, and an hour for socializing and discussion including Japanese appetizers and refreshments. The event provided a window on traditional Japanese culture and also encouraged cultural exchange among a very diverse group of Japanese residents and Americans with an interest in learning more about Japan. Over all the entertainment part of the event went quite well. In the future, we will consider some improvements in advertising the stage location. This year, we had a brand new expansion plan for the venue that featured the stage in a new location of the festival site. Since it was new, the festival attendees were not aware of the change, so a few people had a difficult time finding the main stage. We look forward to having more people enjoy the entertainment in the future. This year's bon odori project continued to bring various performers together to create an authentic bon odori experience and we believe that we made a difference for our audience as well as for the artists. The Minnesota Bon Odori is designed to serve the performing artists as well as the community members who attended the open house and Lantern Lighting Festival. Altogether, nearly thirty artists were given a chance to work with each other providing both the dance, music and the taiko drum parts of the performance. The artists who participated in offering this unique program of artistic collaboration only made possible through this project, and the Twin Cities community at large is able to meet and interact with the artists and learn about Japanese traditional music and dance. Although the cultural heritage of the Minnesota Bon Odori is Japanese, there are multiple communities brought together though its performance; the open house which has drawn about 30-35 people and the festival is open to everyone. This year with the cooperation of the Saint Paul – Nagasaki Sister City Committee in recruiting and directing the entertainment at the main stage, there were 10 groups participating in the full entertainment program. The audience was made of members of the Japan related community with Japanese and American citizens with a Japan connection or a positive interest in Japanese culture. There were families with children and adults as well as seniors in the audience. We view this as an important opportunity to present a unique Japanese folk tradition with the Minnesota Bon Odori and the other performances. The event appealed to Japanese immigrants and Japanese-Americans interested in their cultural heritage, but it also attracted a wide variety of people who have an interest in Japanese culture or have lived in Japan. We also welcomed individuals who have no specific ties with Japan but are curious to learn more about another culture. To ensure that the our project fully embraced the diversity of the community, we advertised both out in the general public through recreational and community centers and Twin-Cities news sources, as well as through community-specific media such as our newsletter and other media that serve the Asian-American community in the Twin Cities. In addition, the pre-festival open house and demonstration allowed a broader section of the community to gain a deeper understanding of the bon odori tradition and Japanese culture. The artists involved, while predominantly of Japanese heritage, did include performers of varying backgrounds and ages. We hope in the future to integrate younger and more diversified artists into the project to guarantee the sustainability of Minnesota’s own bon odori tradition and the lantern lighting festival tradition of Japan in Minnesota.