Diane perfecting her mischievous stage look.

Matt getting his groove on...or maybe his tabi...or perhaps both.

One thing that made Kokyo especially festive--the addition of Cat on fue and Joy on chappa.

The New Snuggie Spokesperson!

For the second year in a row, ONE played for Northeastern University’s International Gala Night. From the general bounciness of Kokyo to the rock ‘n’ roll of Mahora, we were definitely setting off some good vibrations as evidenced by the enthusiastic response of the audience, not to mention the dust floating down from the overhead lights.  (At least this year we didn’t have one of the light gels drift down mid-performance as it did last year.)

Kokyo had a bit of a hiccup in the ending signal with several people thinking we were at “last time” before we actually were. But then those folks managed to loop back in such that we all ended together. As Kate said later, this primarily resulted in a lot of laughing at ourselves which added to the “we’re having a blast up here” vibe. We also did talk later, though, about possibly revising Kokyo such that we wouldn’t be so reliant on an ending signal perhaps by adding more variations to the main line.

After a brief interval of introductions, we came back for a very powerful rendition of Mahora. This may have been the best I’ve ever heard us play this song, and it certainly seemed as if the audience agreed. We got off stage quickly to make room for a dance group (whose black pants had been noted as just the kind of thing we’re looking for by the costume committee). They were giving us a big-round of applause and thumbs-up as we rolled the drums out to the scene shop behind the stage (where Diane lost a bachi last year….hmmm…does the rung of that rocking chair look vaguely familiar?).

After returning drums to the dojo, we all went out to Uno’s for a baby shower for Shigeru and Kristen, the highlight of which was probably the presentation of the Snuggie with photos of Shigeru’s face pasted onto the Snuggie box by Cat. We all agreed he could easily become a success as the Snuggie spokesperson. Now that Emi’s arrived I think we need new photos of Snuggie Daddy with his daughter.