Para Para is a solo dance originating in Japan created by a few outgoing club-traveling Japanese girls in Tokyo in the 1970s. Just because it is solo doesn't mean that you will be alone though. It can involve all of the people in the club doing a dance in synchronization, each particular song having a predetermined dance routine. You dance by moveing mainly your arms but take only a few actual steps from side to side (not always the case: some dances further elaborate on lower body motions. There is ususally a leading expert paralyst (someone who does para para) that everyone dancing follows. In para para, everyone is having fun, no matter what skill level you are!
But you'll probably ask: "Where can I do this, where can I para?"
There are unfortunately no places in the western hemishpere that I know of where you can dance para para on a regular basis. There are however cultural conventions such as Ohio-con, where different cultural influences are more than welcomed, including para para! If you bring any highly energetic form of music to be played at one of these "cons", chances are, someone may just start dancing to it para para style.
But you'll probably ask: "How will I know how to dance to any given song?"
There is not a para para dance for every song. So, you could probably just pick a song from a suitable genre for para para dancing and make up your own dance. Certain expert para para groups such as the Cyber Queens, Para Para Allstars, Vivace, or A-Class, or some musical artists such as Christine (SCP-Music) will create a dance for the song. These are considered to set the standard for the style and emotion to dance to a specific song. However, groups like these usually only perform dances to the most popular eurobeat and cybertrance songs, so the rest of the songs are totally up to anyone for making a dance for! There are sites on the web and video DVDs that demonstrate the basic idea of how para para is done.
What is Eurobeat?
Eurobeat is generally an Italian Genre, sung by Italian singers, in English, and then poularized in Japan. The main identifier for Eurobeat is the rapid beats and bass lines of it. Another defining point of eurobeat is the energetic synths used in most of the songs in its melodies. It is also very common to hear electric guitars along with the singing and synths. Many songs also have rapid short rests in between words or parts of a song. Eurobeat creators also typically utilize all of the sound channels available to create a louder or more "piercing" effect on the listener. The vocals, although in sometimes bad English that can sometimes make no sense, but it doesn't matter! It makes the music just that much more interesting to listen to. The singers usually sing about love, relationships, cars and racing, and a skew of other subects, such as space invaders and bazookas.
As uncommon as eurobeat is to find, especially for tose in the west, you may have heard eurobeat in games such as the arcade versions of Dance Dance Revolution (Bemani, Konami), with songs such as Boom Boom Dollar/ King Kong & D. Jungle Girls, lash In The Night/ Fashman, or Night of Fire/ Niko. The Japanese version of Initial D, a drift-racing anime, is full of eurobeat.
Eurobeat is a phenomenon in Japan, not yet a worldwide one, but it is growing in popularity in many parts of the world, especially countries along the Pacific rim such as Korea and Australia. Para para has further popularized the genre in clubs in the same area.
Why not try a totally different music genre from the "norm" and be different from all of your friends?
Buying Eurobeat
Unfortunately, if you are living anywhere but Japan, eurobeat will likely be very hard to find in stores. Occasionally, you can find an Initial D soundtrack in some comic book stores which contain, in my opinion, some of the very best eurobeat. Aside from that, you would probably want to look online.
Some eurobeat you might want to try:
SUPER EUROBEAT
A compilation series of eurobeat running since 1994 and is still running today. A new CD generally comes out every month. This is th longest running compilation series of anything, as they are still running strong in the 160s. Super Eurobeat contains mainly the most popular eurobeat songs (not necessarily the best). The eurobeat labels Time, A Beat C, and Delta have had songs on Super Eurobeat for most of the series, but not until the past couple of years have they added Hi-NRG Attack (HRG for short), Vibration, and Boom Boom Beat (3B) in that order.
This is a good place to start your eurobeat collection because the CDs are generally fairly reasonable in price and pretty easy to find online. CD Japan has most of the volumes of Super Eurobeat from 55 to todays 160s.
There are some rare commodities of eurobeat by labels such as Boom Boom Beat and Hi-NRG attacj where they only release some songs on 45 records, so if you wish to buy these, a good place to look are the official sites of these labels. (Refer to the links page).