国士舘大学新体操部

■Festival Del Sole!!: Days Four & Five

Today, I’m going to provide updates for days four and five.

[4^th of July]

The venue for today was Arena Sud, which was close enough for us to walk to from our hotel. We rehearsed at the venue in the morning, and then practiced at a gym. My gymnasts were now used to this routine and our practice went smoothly.

Since we had free time until our performance at night, we went to the shopping mall at the neighboring town of Rimini. We enjoyed shopping as tourists, buying things that cannot be found in Japan. 

Our performance started after 21:00 today. The venue was filled to overflowing with spectators. We heard a lot of compliments and expectations.

When we appeared on stage, thunderous applause filled the arena. Music started as if it was blended into the color of the night sky above Ricione. The accompaniment music used for our team routine is “Cherry Blossoms in Winter”. As its peaceful melody filled the venue, wild applause disappeared and only the gymnasts’ breathing could be heard. Our team routine, which had been revised to make it 1:40 (shorter than the 3 minutes for competitions), ended in a flash. My gymnasts delivered a perfect performance including the balancing pose, handstands, tumbling, and other synchronized movements before moving on to the next jump-rope performance.

The music used for the jump-rope routine was “Nihon-no-Mikata (Friends of Japan)” and “Heaven at School”. The upbeat music made the audience get in the groove. We made this performance more competition-like, paying careful attention to getting the rhythm exactly right. There was a moment when the gymnasts almost failed to keep the rhythm, but they successfully got back to the original rhythm, averting a big mistake. The final group performance was also a big success with a feeling of strong unity with the audience. When we struck a pose at the end of our performance, the audience went crazy and gave us a standing ovation. Overall, our performance for the day went quite successfully.

[5^th of July]

Today is the last day we’ll show our group performance. We will have done it at different places for four days. The last venue is Arena Alba, which is located within a five-minute-walk from the first venue. We could feel the audience most closely here of all the venues.

In the morning, we rehearsed for the evening performance then went to the Arena Roma, the venue for the closing ceremony for the last day. We rehearsed our performance there, too. The Arena Roma is the main venue for this year’s Festival Del Sole. Although it is a bit smaller than the other venues, it has a stage, and the place will be filled with more than 10,000 people on the last day. We are supposed to appear as the final performance group like we did last time. We are so proud of being treated like that, and at the same time, couldn’t help thinking about the efforts and contributions made by staff or other performers for this festival. We’d like to show our respect and gratitude to everyone involved through our performance.

Today, we were supposed to give a workshop before our performance at night. We wanted to show how to use apparatus for individual routines to participants, but unfortunately it was cancelled due to rainy weather. Different from the previous visit to Riccione two years ago, we have sometimes had unstable weather this time. I heard that some other workshops had been cancelled the previous day. Although our workshop was cancelled too, we had fun taking pictures with the participants who came to the venue for our workshop.

Our performance tonight was to start at 22:15, the latest performance we’ve ever given. Actually, there was a possibility of cancellation of the show due to rain and strong wind, but it started anyway. However, it got ahead of schedule by 30 minutes, and our turn would be 30 minutes earlier. But we encountered a situation which would never ever happen in Japan. When there were only two teams to go before us, we were asked, “You were supposed to start at 22:15, and some people come here to see Kokushikan. So, is it OK for you to wait until 22:15, and let other teams perform before you?” I leaned that things which wouldn’t happen in Japan happen here, and although I felt sorry for other teams, I said OK. The teams which were supposed to perform after us kindly agreed with the plan, and we gave our performance as scheduled.

In front of the overcrowded audience, we showed our performance, which I thought had more sense of unity. Some people even had tears in their eyes. It came as a fresh reminder that men’s RG has a great power to move people. Tomorrow is our last day at Festival del Sole. We’ll do our very best as the final performer of this festival.