#back when it was just a blurry page with no higher quality lol

[meownotgood]

it's been a year since we first saw aki's anime concept arts <3

[10dance]

Real 10 Dance 2022 Review!

The remote version of Real 10 Dance this year was streamed on 6/25 at 8pm JST and was available for playback for 72 hours. This was my first time attending the event, so you know I had to go back and take so many screenshots >:). Unfortunately most of them came out pretty blurry, but you can find much higher quality pictures from the Real 10 Dance twitter, Odori Biyori twitter, or Nishio Kouichi’s blogposts (first half | second half). (If you’d like to see, I also posted all of my pictures here on Imgur, some of which will be in this post.)

The stream is long gone now, but they sent a behind the scenes video for audience members who added tips to the staff, dancers, or Inoue. Here is the link (password: dancethanks) if you would like to see parts of their performances. I keep reliving the experience by rewatching this...

The first few sections were a lot of talking which I did not understand, but sailorspazz wrote up a very detailed report for that too :), please go read it for an accurate account of the event. As for me, I’ll skip right to the manga discussion and dance sequences under the cut lol.

Our panel of dance (and manga) experts come into frame and introduce themselves (left to right: Takashima Kiyomi, Motoike Jun, Shimoda Ai, Kajiya Takashi). I liked how Motoike-sensei hid his face behind the catalogue from the 2019 exhibition lol. He was my favorite part of the segment since he was sometimes just flipping through the pages while the others talked about something else haha. 

The first section was the dancers picking out a dance scene they liked from the manga and discussed the characters’ postures as well as the atmosphere of the dances that were portrayed (ex. the waltz from chapter 4, the God of Dance in chapter 25 etc.). The second section was almost entirely them breaking down all the things that make Suzuki’s face great (and praising Inoue’s art in general lol). Motoike-sensei even went as far as recreating a Suzuki panel on the whiteboard, which I imagine was very hard to do. They had to clarify that he definitely doesn’t draw under the Inouesatoh pen name lol. 

(This pictures cracks me up no matter how many times I’ve seen it)

Then comes the main dances! I’ll include 2-3 photos of every number (incl. links to the music) and give short comments for each. (Again, there are way nicer pictures in the links mentioned above but I’m partly writing this for me to recollect my thoughts so bear with me :P)

Masquerade (Khachaturian) - Viennese Waltz (Shimoda Ai, Murano Miri, Seuchi Hideyuki, Masuda Daisuke, Sekine Choma, Takagi Takashi, Motoike Jun, and Nishio Kouichi)

I loved that we got to see a female dance pair!! The way their dresses spun was so pretty, and when the rest of the group joined in, it really felt like a masquerade dance. This piece was very important in the 10 Dance plot, I’m glad that I could see people dancing to it (nothing came up on Youtube when I searched for it lmao).

Butter (BTS) - Cha Cha Cha (Kajiya Takashi and Katsube Kou)

This is probably the first time I listened to Butter in full, and now it’s kind of stuck in my head... The dance was really upbeat, I especially liked the part where they kept spinning, they just kept going..! The pair looked liked they were having a lot of fun lol.

Calmi Cuori Appassionati - Rumba and Samba (Sekine Choma and Takagi Takashi)

This was one of my favorite dances! It told such a dramatic love story and I kept rewatching it (and the BTS version) over and over again. As sailorspazz already mentioned, the shorter dancer (Sekine Choma) got to lead during the dance as well which is a bit uncommon even in same-sex dancing, so that was really cool. I had to add this third hilarious photo in as well, it’s so good that I’ve made a meme using it lmao (more HQ pictures from this dance).

All That Jazz (“Chicago” musical) - Slow Jive (Kamiwaki Yukiko, Saiki Tomoko, Shizumu Ai, Numata Manami, Takashima Kiyomi, and Tsukada Mami)

Ladies’ number B)! I saw the pictures soon after the in-person event was held in April; I quote retweeted it with “Women 👀” and got a like from one of the dancers... That wasn’t relevant, but anyway, I loved watching this dance!

Romeo and Juliet (Nino Rota) - Waltz (Nishio Kouichi and Motoike Jun)

Uh oh, time to bawl my eyes out again... This was obviously going to be my favorite dance of the event; it’s got the drama, the angst, and them wearing tuxedoes just makes the Honor Dance headcanon that much more real, how could I not cry?! Both dancers are similar in body type, so I’m really looking forward to using these pictures as reference for a certain fandom day coming up in a few months 👀...

Up All Night (Charlie Puth) - Rumba (Seuchi Hideyuki and Masuda Daisuke)

This is another song they managed to get stuck in my head lol. It’s such a sweet rumba (compared to the angsty one before) and it really felt like the dance moves and expressions matched the lyrics! The hand hold at the end is adorable too...

It’s Time To Dance (“The Prom” musical)

Allow me to indulge in spamming pictures from this finale, there were simply too many cute moments! I’m pretty sure Nishio-sensei and Motoike-sensei have paired up in past events as well, and they got to strike three different poses in this dance (not including them fixing each other’s collars because AWW THAT’S SO CUTE WTF). All in all, this was a great experience for those who couldn’t attend in-person, I hope they keep doing it every year for us overseas fans as well!