On Sunday, August 3, 2025, from 12:00 p.m. to eight:00 p.m., Kingston Point Beach will as soon as once more come alive with dance, music, remembrance, and activism as town hosts the fifteenth Annual Bon-Odori Dance Day for Peace. The free occasion honors the victims of nuclear disasters on the eightieth anniversary of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and marks different vital anniversaries, together with the fifteenth 12 months because the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear meltdown and the thirty ninth because the Chernobyl catastrophe.
Based in 2011 by Kingston residents Youko Yamamoto, a designer and chef, and Kazuma Oshita, a steel sculptor, Bon-Odori Dance Day for Peace brings collectively the neighborhood to help a world, multicultural effort towards a nuclear-free future. This 12 months’s theme underscores the pressing want to scale back radioactive waste and warmth air pollution from nuclear energy technology.
Ought to there be excessive warmth or rain, the occasion shall be held on the Andy Murphy Midtown Heart at 467 Broadway, Kingston.
The occasion is rooted within the Japanese summer time custom of Bon-odori, a folks dance held throughout Obon, when households honor the spirits of their ancestors. Communities throughout Japan collect to bounce round a raised platform known as a *yagura*, accompanied by stay music and taiko drums. The dance is straightforward and inclusive, making it a joyful collective ritual of remembrance and connection.
This 12 months’s program begins on the “Japan Cease” info sales space and options a variety of native performers, together with:
Particular visitor speaker Tinya Seeger will share tales about her dad and mom, Pete and Toshi Seeger. A memorial for Invoice Vanaver, the late founding father of the Vanaver Caravan, will comply with.
Nuclear disarmament activists Dr. Diane Swords and Dr. Larry Wittner of Peace Motion New York State and Again From The Brink will communicate on ending the Nuclear Age. Further performances embody sumi ink brush artwork by Barbara Bash and Youko Yamamoto, an aikido demonstration by Kingston Aikido, and peace songs by Stephen Johnson with Nu Bossa** and Robert Albrecht with Free Vary.
Household favorites like Suikawari (the Japanese recreation of busting a watermelon) shall be again, together with Taiko drumming by Stuart Paton of Burlington Taiko and Bon-Odori dance led by Kevin Suzuki and Minbuza, the dance firm of the Japanese People Dance Institute of New York.
The venue shall be divided into three areas-pavilion, grass subject, and beach-featuring performances, workshops, and cubicles selling sustainable practices, wellness, peace, and worldwide tradition. Distributors embody the Local weather Sensible Tiffin Undertaking, Mohonk Consultations, Jorei by Shumei, Peace Training Heart, Veterans for Peace, Hudson Valley Peace Park, and others. A raffle will function reward donations from native companies similar to Adams Fairacres Farms, Bluecashew, Tanma Ramen, and Tough Draft.
The night will shut with a Coronary heart Sutra chant led by **Youko Yamamoto** and **Yuzan Toyoda**, a Jodo-shinshu Buddhist monk, adopted by a spiral stroll for peace led by internationally famend Buddhist nun **Jun-san Yasuda**, carrying the Flame of Hiroshima introduced from Quebec.
Because the struggle in Ukraine continues and world nuclear tensions rise, the occasion calls on communities to take motion. With almost 10,000 nuclear warheads worldwide and 440 nuclear reactors producing radioactive waste and warmth, organizers stress the pressing have to abolish nuclear weapons and transition to nonviolent, sustainable power.
This 12 months’s Bon-Odori Dance Day for Peace is made doable with the help of the Metropolis of Kingston and the Radio Kingston Group Tech Group.
For extra info, go to: bonodori.org
Supply: Pressenza
