国士舘大学新体操部

■Festival Del Sole!!: Day Two

Today, we performed for the first time at the Arena Nord, one of the five venues at Festival Del Sole. It has capacity for more than 1,000 people. The biggest feature of this place is that it is open-air. The show starts from 20:00 and ends at 23:00. Every team from various countries will show their performance at the given place and time. All the venues are set along the seashore, and the audience can see any performance for free. During the festival, tens of thousands of people visit Riccione, a seaside resort town, to enjoy performances. We, Kokushikan University Men’s Rhythmic Gymnastics Team, were first invited to this festival in 2016. We were inspired by the many people we met there two years ago, and expect to have exciting experiences this year as well.

There was a rehearsal at the venue starting at 8 in the morning, and the allotted time slot for us was from 9:15. Under the blazing sun (it is unusual for rhythmic gymnasts to perform outside), we rehearsed our 13-minute-performance, which was created exclusively for this festival. Although we had only 15 minutes, which is the same as the actual performance, we made the best use of it and finished our rehearsal.

After that, we moved indoors to a gym and checked our performance in detail. Then we had meals and headed for the venue to get prepared for our performance starting from 21:15 only to find that a lot of the audience was already waiting for us. The festival started with a performance by a junior team from Denmark. Performances were given one after another while the audience cheered. As our turn approached, the venue was filled to the brim. The excitement and nervousness of my gymnasts mixed with the expectations of the audience, then our turn came at last.

We started our group routine to the following introduction: “Kokushikan, which showed us a brilliant performance in 2016, has returned! Tonight, we are expecting yet another wonderful performance from them!” The audience sometimes took a deep breath of admiration or reacted with cheers as gymnasts sprang into action, which must have motivated my gymnasts. Our group routine for the festival lasts 1 minutes and 40 seconds (shorter than the normal group routine for competitions), but all the elements were successful and greeted with huge applause.

Our next performance was a new jump rope routine. Actually, Kokushikan has a long tradition of jump rope performances. We gave it a modern arrangement with a comic touch, but it requires high skill to entertain the audience. During this routine, we managed to create a feeling of unity with handclaps and cheers from the audience before moving on to our last routine. It is a group performance, “Revolution,” by all the members. Before the performance, we had worried it might be difficult to convey the message to an audience who speaks different languages, but they fully understood the theme of our performance.

There was a big country where one ruler had supreme authority. But one day, a revolutionary appeared. Little by little, the number of citizens who agreed with him increased, and it changed into a citizen’s militia. The two sides clashed.

This story has plenty to see: synchronization of men’s rhythmic gymnastics, skills of individual performers, collaboration with other sports (baton twirling), the theme of the story.

The audience really enjoyed our performance, which provided the finale for the first day of the festival. We got a standing ovation and thunderous applause in admiration of our performance. Although we had space to improve, we felt a unity with the audience, making today a wonderful day.

We’re going to perform every day, and want to enjoy each opportunity, find new inspiration, and make progress in Italy.