Circles Today (2) JAZZ DANCE Circle SIG / Voice Acting Society

At JAZZ DANCE Circle SIG, we practice mostly the genre of jazz dancing at Hiyoshi Campus with our instructor to prepare for various events, such as our stage performance to welcome new students, a stage performance at Mita Festival, joint practice events with our sister circles, and contests. Our usual practice at Hiyoshi has a really friendly atmosphere, and senior and junior students all get along very well as if we are all in the same class at high school. We all enjoy dancing seriously.
At our three-day training camps during Golden Week and summer vacation, there are no drinking parties like in other circles, but instead, we dance all day long, and we also have fun doing fireworks, tests of courage, and nagashi somen (where you catch and eat somen noodles as they run down a stream of water in a bamboo pipe). In a lot of ways, it is unlike the usual university student lifestyle, as we cherish these carefree days of our youth.
It’s so much fun to dance together at training camps, at daily practices, and at the stage performances—it’s really the best feeling in the world.

What and who do you all visualize when you hear the words “voice acting?” Your answers will probably differ greatly depending on your generation. From the time when the term “voice acting” didn’t even exist and was just an on-the-side job for actors, until today when voice acting itself has become an important element in entertainment (as represented by the existence of the term “voice actor idol”), the essence of doing voices hasn’t changed. However, voice acting has played an important role in popular Japanese subculture, which recently even gave rise to the term “Cool Japan.”
The Voice Acting Society consists of Keio University students who are interested in Japanese subculture in general, including animation. Some of our main activities include inviting a voice actor to an event at our school festival where we learn the real story behind the voice acting industry, and publishing a little magazine in which we report on our events and feature writings and illustrations by our members.
As supporters of the diverse culture of Japan, we hope to promote Japanese subculture from the standpoint of university students.