Awa Odori Dance Festival Opens amid Earthquake Concern; Performance Venues Prepare Shelters, Post Maps for Audience Members

The Yomiuri Shimbun

11:46 JST, August 12, 2024

TOKUSHIMA — The annual dance event known as the Awa Odori Festival opened in Tokushima on Sunday with special additional cautions and safety measures in place following the recent issuance of a Megathrust Earthquake Attention advisory.

The five-day festivities started with 600 dancers selected from the Yumeiren group of accomplished dancers giving a faultless performance of the Awa Odori, a famous traditional dance from Tokushima, at an indoor venue in the city, where evacuation guidance maps were set up to alert audience members.

The maps, which showed evacuation routes from different seating blocks in the auditorium, were put up by the event’s organizing committee at the entrances and in the dressing rooms for the dancers. Before the performance and during intermissions, the map was displayed on a screen in the auditorium, accompanied by an announcement that a shelter was prepared on the third floor.

Although Sunday’s performances were all indoors, the dances will be held at five outdoor venues and at squares in the city from Monday to Thursday. The committee and the Tokushima municipal government put up 50 maps at the various venues showing where to find evacuation shelters. The map can be seen on the official Awa Odori website as well.