Taka’s dynamic dance moves sure to be big in Japan

A JAPANESE computer ace who never danced in his life gave up his career, home and family to learn to Riverdance in Ireland after being swept off his feet by the show in his native Tokyo.

Now Takayuki Hayashi is kicking up his heels with the best of them and has his heart set on returning to Japan in triumph as part of the next Riverdance troupe to tour his country.

The dramatic turnaround in the 30-year-old economics graduate and amateur triathlete’s life came when he was working as an IT consultant in Tokyo and went to see the Riverdance spectacular with friends.

“It’s hard to explain why I felt what I did,” he said of the show’s overwhelming effect on him. “I never danced before but it made me feel like I am a born dancer. It was like I am breathing it.”

Taka first arrived in Ireland three years ago with hardly a word of English, which made all the more difficult his task of convincing dance teachers to take him on as a student. “People were thinking I am mad,” he laughed.

His persistence paid off and, after mastering the basic steps, he worked on his technique with such dedication that he reached the Irish dancing world championships and then passed a rigorous audition for the Masters Course in Dance Performance at the Irish World Music Centre in University of Limerick.

He is specialising in Irish dance, and has benefited from the guidance of artist-in-residence, original Riverdance heroine Jean Butler, but is also taking contemporary dance classes and is studying the exotic-sounding academic subject of ethnochoreology.

“It’s the study of dance and culture,” said course director Catherine Foley, who was the first person in Europe to teach the subject when she set up the course in 1996 and now teaches dancers from the United States, Canada, Australia, Scotland and all over Europe.

Taka is her first Japanese student but she never doubted his ability to transform himself into the most Irish of creations. “You can come from any culture and learn to understand another one. We think nothing of learning the language of another country and this is just about learning the body language of another country.

“Since Riverdance, Irish dance no longer belongs just to Ireland. Because of Riverdance, it has become an international art,” she said.