Last Monday, February 17th, as part of my ICR (which is through the Indianapolis Association for Chinese Americans) we began to learn the lion dance. One of the members from the IACA, Kwan, came to teach it to us. I was very curious what we would learn, as I had never seen a lion dance performed before.
Before we started to learn, Kwan showed us a full performance, which was astonishing. The dance consists of two people in a lion costume, working together to create the illusion of a lion dancing on stage. The coordination and chemistry between these two people was astounding, and made me very excited to start learning.
We then began actually learning how to do the basics. This consisted of us learning how to properly hold the head and shake it around, or to be in the back, creating the illusion of the lion breathing while walking around. I quickly learned that holding the head up for so long takes far more strength than I originally thought. This was just the beginning of learning how to properly perform the lion dance, but I feel like I learned a lot.