Tuesday, September 7, 2010

Taiko!

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Taiko 3

More from the Japanese Festival at the Missouri Botanical Garden. The taiko drummers are always the hit of the show. St. Louis Osuwa Taiko are the superb local practitioners. This art has has thunder and drive but the polyrhythms can be maddeningly complex. I sat there trying to count the out the beats, like listening to something by Steve Reich, and just couldn't keep up. Part of the problem may have been that I was trying to shoot pictures at the same time.

Big, dumb me: I had all my equipment ready to go for yesterday, parked the car near the garden and then remembered that the batteries for my DSLRs were still in the chargers, plugged in at home. Fortunately, Carolyn had my little Canon G11 in her shoulder bag, which she used in Ireland. As someone said, the best camera is the one you have with you.

Here's a little iPhone video of part of the performance:



Taiko 4

Taiko 1

8 comments:

  1. Looks like a loud festival... Must been a great show.

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  2. trois belles photos avec beaucoup d'énergie.

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  3. Great action here - are there only girls among the drummers? It looks like an energy-filled activity!

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  4. I'm glad I'm not the only one to leave batteries at home. I zipped off to Paris last summer with only one, left the charger and the spare plugged in. Costly mistake.

    V

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  5. Great seeing/re-meeting you again at Taiko. I haven't looked at my pictures yet.

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  6. I had no idea it was also a dance routine! beautiful...
    Love the kimono colors and patterns.

    Ciao

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  7. WOW! Great pictures! My husband is in that group and is actually the drummer in the background in the last picture! I can't wait to show the group this page and your fantastic photos!

    For more info I recently made a page on Squidoo about them with more videos: http://www.squidoo.com/stltaiko.


    I'm really glad I found your blog, too. I often get a lot more from photos than long articles, and your pictures here are very entertaining, so I think I'm going to love keeping up on your blog. Already bookmarked it!

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