dance3

As you’ve probably guessed, we’re fans of modern dance, from World Order to enthusiastic otaku to Kenichi Ebina. Of course, traditional dance is very cool as well, but we have to admit we have a particular soft spot for the many modern dance groups you can find around the world, and so we felt compelled to share a new video released this month that shows off some of the coolest modern dancers we’ve ever seen.

Featuring a collaboration between the Dancing Strawhats and Koharu Sugawara, you definitely won’t want to miss this video!

dance2

Set to the music of London-based producer TroyBoi, the video shows the masked Dancing Strawhats tearing it up with Koharu Sugawara and her team at Shorenji in Kyoto. TroyBoi’s song “Till the AM” provides an infectious trap beat for the surreal dancing of the seven performers. And thanks to some beautiful cinematography, surreal is the perfect word for what this video delivers!

In case you haven’t heard of them before, the Dancing Strawhats are, as you have probably guessed, a team of three dancers who wear straw hats. However, it seems that they’re also actually the Norwegian dance group Quick Crew, who won 2009’s Norway’s Got Talent competition and have toured around the world both performing and teaching. Apparently, the Dancing Strawhats are their newest project, and the first Dancing Strawhats video, a collaboration with Korea’s Jinjo Crew called “The Heroes,” was presented earlier this year.

Before officially becoming the Dancing Strawhats, they created this incredibly beautiful and melancholic video, “Tokyo Night.”

The leader of the dancers in kimono is none other than Koharu Sugawara, a Japanese choreographer and dancer who’s been performing since she was ten. She started winning attention at a young age following TV appearances as a middle school student and winning at Japan’s Dance Attack. She’s worked with numerous performance groups and taught at workshops around the world, and based on her videos, it’s not hard to see why!

▼ Koharu working with a large team of dancers

▼ Dancing solo in China to the amusement of onlookers

And if you’re digging the music as much as the dancers, you’ll want to be sure to check out the rest of TroyBoi’s tracks, such as “7th Sense,” below.

Now, if we can just get all these dancers in the same room with World Order, we think we can create the Dance Ragnarok, joined by the techno vikings and their pop-n-lockin’ Valkyrie. We don’t know what that actually means, but we bet we’d all be too busy shaking our butts to care!

Sources: YouTube/Dancing Strawhats, Dancing StrawhatsJapaaan, Dance StreamKoharu Sugawara, TroyBoi
Images: YouTube/Dancing Strawhats