By Chamiya Carnathan

One of the fondest memories that I have of Japanese Plus is the Cha Cha Slide. For the KAKEHASHI visits that occurred in March (March 18th and March 25th), the visits were broken up into 4 different parts. Conversational exchanges between Japanese and American students, the Japanese students teaching their culture to American students through presentations, American students showing their culture through a performance, and lunch time. Besides conversing with the Japanese students, my favorite part of the visit was teaching the Japanese students the Cha Cha Slide. 

The Cha Cha Slide is a very popular dance that relatively every American knows how to dance to. The history of the Cha Cha Slide is very interesting as it didn’t actually begin as a song or dance, but rather an aerobic workout. DJ Casper, the creator of the Cha Cha Slide, put music to the workout and began selling copies of the song. The rest is history, as the song became popular, and people are still dancing to it 20 years later.

Since the Cha Cha Slide is a popular dance and Japanese Plus wants to show the Japanese students a piece of American culture, the Cha Cha slide was the perfect choice. D’Amonie Armstrong and I chose to explain the significance of the dance and how to dance to it. First, we began explaining that the Cha Cha Slide is a pivotal dance that almost every American knows. You can practically dance it for every occasion, a wedding, a birthday party, prom, etc. Next, we showed the different moves that the Japanese students needed to know. Of course, we taught the basic Cha Cha move where you swish your hips while you move back and forth. We also taught that the dance is basically a huge instruction manual since the dance literally tells you when to go right, left, back, jump, stomp, etc. Lastly, we taught OUR version of the Charlie Brown move. We know that many people have different versions of the Charlie Brown move. Some may kick their feet up or spin around in a circle. But we decided that we would show the most iconic move (in my opinion), the running man move. It’s basically when the dancer does a hopping move with alternating feet and with arm motion. After D’Amonie and I finished explaining the instructions, we began dancing to the song. 

After we finished dancing to the Cha Cha Slide, I looked around and saw that everyone had smiles on their faces. The Cha Cha Slide helped everyone open up a bit as the Japanese students talked with the American students afterwards. I asked a few Japanese students whether they liked the dance and they said that they really liked it. I was very proud after I showed the dance to both KAKEHASHI groups. We showed a glimpse of what American culture is like.