Watch the Stars of ‘Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!’ Recall Their Tango Lessons in Tokyo

Josef Kubota Wladyka’s “Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!” is a multicultural feast for the senses. The colorful story of a woman tangoing her way through the grieving process after her husband abruptly dies is set in Tokyo’s ballroom dancing scene, with characters seamlessly switching between speaking English, Spanish, and Japanese. It’s a one-of-a-kind film, which required a one-of-a-kind production process.

Following the film’s Sundance premiere, Wladyka and stars Alberto Guerra and Alejandro Edda visited the IndieWire Studio, presented by Dropbox. During our conversation, Guerra and Edda revealed that they had no ballroom dancing experience before the film, which required them to take lessons in Japan.

“Zero,” Guerra said when asked about his dance history prior to landing the role. “That was amazing. It’s beautiful when this profession gets you to crazy places. The fact that I found myself in 2024 learning how to tango and cha-cha-cha and mambo and rumba in Japan… that was something that was not in my book.” 

Dancing can transcend language once you know what you’re doing, but Edda admitted that the language barrier with their instructors made it a particularly challenging process at times.

“We had two incredible dance teachers. Japanese, so imagine the clash,” Edda said. “They were teaching us in English with Japanese and [we were] learning the steps but also trying to grasp what was said… I had a headache from processing so many things at once.”

The hard work paid off, and ultimately seems like a fitting metaphor for a film about the ways that dance can unite people from across cultural barriers. It’s a theme that Wladyka frequently addresses in the film, and he explained that he thinks dance can express emotions that verbal communication never could.

“I think it’s the universal language,” Wladyka said. “It’s our bodies, it’s movement. It’s the most powerful thing I feel transcends boundaries.”

Watch our full conversation with the “Ha-Chan, Shake Your Booty!” team above.