Haiku Hands Turn El Cid Into A Late-Night Dancefloor
After a chance run-in with It’s Not You It’s Me favorites Haiku Hands at WeHo Pride, where the Australian alternative dance group performed earlier in the evening, we were ecstatic to be invited to their first headlining show here in Los Angeles.
The night quickly became one of those properly sweaty, properly strange, properly alive L.A. music moments — the kind that reminds you there is still a dancefloor hiding underneath the bottle-service fog if you know where to look.
The electro, house, and hip-hop three-threat — Mie Nakazawa, Claire Nakazawa, and Beatrice Lewis — all hail from Australia, and INYIM has been on the Haiku Hands frequency for years. We first shared them back in 2018 through our long-running Musique Digs Playlist with their track “Not About You.”
So seeing them take over El Cid — that intimate, allegedly haunted flamenco hall where INYIM regularly partied during the electro-dance scene of the 00s — felt like a full-circle collision of blog-era discovery, club-kid muscle memory, and new-school dance-floor electricity.
INYIM Dancefloor Note
If Haiku Hands sends you into an indie-dance spiral, keep the night moving with official music links, vinyl finds, and post-punk dancefloor staples.
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The room filled with a diverse, ready-to-move crowd, and by the time the group hit the stage at about 11 p.m., the air already had that late-night Los Angeles charge: half concert, half warehouse memory, half “where did all these dancers come from?” Yes, that is too many halves. That was the point.
From the first track, the flow hit with flashes of early JJ Fad, while the crowd’s energy brought back shades of Gravy Train!!! and Le Tigre — messy, stylish, shouted-out, synchronized, and very much not interested in standing still.
In full synchronicity, the two Nakazawa sisters and Lewis traveled the intimate stage before marching into the audience, winding up an already impressive dancing crowd. Backed by a DJ who gave the set an extra nightlife feel and look, the group turned samples, chants, and original dance tracks into one continuous body-moving situation.
The sample of Hardrive’s “Deep Inside” shadowed Haiku Hands’ own original tracks, including the hard-hitting single “Ma Ruler,” and the result was exactly what we needed from a Los Angeles night out: sweat, noise, personality, rhythm, and absolutely no interest in behaving politely.
We must commend Haiku Hands for a great night on the dancefloor in a town where bottle service has taken over too many corners. For one night at El Cid, the ghost of dancing’s past came back up through the floorboards and reminded everyone what the once-vibrant indie dance scene felt like.
No poem readings on this night out. Check out our exclusive videos and photos from Haiku Hands at El Cid below.
Watch Haiku Hands Live At El Cid
INYIM caught the group’s Los Angeles dance-floor takeover from inside the room.
Haiku Hands At El Cid: INYIM Photo Gallery
A few more moments from the intimate, high-energy Los Angeles headline set.
Gallery: Haiku Hands live at El Cid in Los Angeles. Photos by Victor Atomic / INYIM Media.
For more on Haiku Hands, visit their official site at haikuhands.com.au.
Special thanks to the group and Spinning Top Music for the night’s accommodations.
Source note: INYIM Media attended and captured Haiku Hands at El Cid in Los Angeles. Artist, member, song, and official-link details are included from the original event coverage and Haiku Hands’ official channels.
