Tokyo Decadance
Tokyo Decadance is a club night based in Japan. Founded by Adrien la Danois, this night was meant to bring together all Japanese fashion tribes. What it has become now, is a place for extreme fashion diversity, and a great party scene.
Origin
Adrien le Danois was 23 years old when, on the point of becoming the founder of the Tokyo Decadence nights, he arrived in Japan. At the time he was a cook in a prestigious Chinese restaurant in Tokyo, and one evening organized a party for a French friend in this establishment. To everyone’s surprise eighty people crammed into the tiny room. This chance success was to be the trigger which would motivate the young man to resume an activity he had set aside four years earlier in France: organizing evening events. The success of the first parties drove him to a project on a larger scale: to create a unique event, the aim of which was to give a new vision of alternative night-life in Japan. At a time when Japanese evening events each targeted a particular social circle, Adrien disregarded the codes and targeted all types of people, and all types of styles at once. and so the Tokyo Decadance concept Was Born.
The success of the first Tokyo Decadance night exceeded all expectations: 700 people responded to the call, compared to, generally, a maximum of 200 in alternative Japanese evening
events. Among them were above all lolitas* and members of the [...] and SM worlds, a few gyaru*, but also characters whose names would reappear later on; Sisen, the muse D of the Tokyo Gothic nights, was at the first Tokyo Decadence night as a client, little suspecting that he would become an essential protagonist of them. The same goes for Coco, who was already there as a dancer, and destined to become one of the mainstays of the adventure, for the simple but good reason that she immediately absorbed the very essence of this concept of a mix of genres. It was a concept that, unfortunately, not everyone assimilated as successfully, since despite a night which had people in raptures, a few criticisms concerning the lack of identification of the night were voiced here and there: diversity did not seem to be so easy to accept. The effect of these attacks was simple: they strengthened Adrien’s motivation: he laid places fifteen days later in a well-known club in the Shibuya* district. The Tokyo Decadence nights therefore took on a monthly rhythm (something which is quite rare in Japan, where no-one can count on a night surviving), and a different theme for each episode: Haunted house, Ero-pop, Fight, etc. Gradually the ship’s crew grew: Anna joined the group from the second night, Kengo at the sixth… and more and more artists and performers demonstrated a desire to be a part of the adventure, including celebrities, such as Dengenki Networks for example (known abroad by the name Tokyo Shock Boys). These were collaborations which obviously greatly helped the success of Tokyo Decadence.
Then everything happened very Fast…
After one year, an increasingly solid reputation, combined with the precious help of the Internet, gave Tokyo Decadence international infl uence. Emails and other virtual praise began arriving en masse, and Tokyo Decadence fast spread beyond the borders of Japan, attracting people from around the world, who were charmed by this spirit of diversity and of mixing of genres and cultures. In February 2007 the crew was invited to the Prêt-à-Porter International Fair in Paris, France. A large media presence and a growing interest in Japanese culture quickly turned them into the representatives of the different cultures of Japanese youth. An event was improvised during this stay: it attracted over 400 people from all around France, from Belgium and even from Spain, with hardly any promotion. The TD virus had contaminated Europe. Four months later Tokyo Decadence started on a French, Dutch and German tour, closely followed by a second round, such was its success. A little later, during a third European tour, the team had a decisive meeting with Olivier Bodeur, the boss of the agency Alerte Orange which, through its music branch (Red Tracks), would become the co-producer of the project, and thus provide professional support and new prospects. Tokyo Decadence now operates in over 17 countries and performs in auditoria with capacities of up to 1500. Despite this phenomenal expansion, Adrien is determined to keep the initial image of Tokyo Decadence, and to prove that it is perfectly possible to expand without quality suffering as a result, and that it is perfectly possible to fi nd a balance between the underground and the mainstream, the popular and the alternative: the perfect balance which artists such as Marilyn Manson or Björk have managed to fi nd. In short, it has been a wonderful adventure to date, but it has only just begun…
Characters
info gvien by and also from http://www.myspace.com/tokyodecadance