By John Le
Uniform? Check.
Cymbals? Check.
Drums? Check.
As a band member in her lion dancing group, Đội Múa Lân Hưng Đạo, senior Michelle Hua’s position in the art of lion dancing is different from others. As a two-year member now, she clearly has not shown growth and expertise in her involvement with the group, but also the maturity of her character and cultural roots.
Hua became a part of her lion dance group through her youth group at her church, the Vietnamese Eucharist Youth Movement.
“I joined when I was a sophomore through TNTT. Most of our members are in TNTT so it kind of was natural for me to join as well,” said Hua.
Her two-year involvement has involved lots of rigorous practice and intense performance seasons. With her group being booked at Chinese New year festivals through Orange County to private weddings, Hua has clearly devoted lots of time in training herself and others to help provide the energy to these dances
“We train with intense conditioning like pyramid workouts. Then after, we will split off into dance and band to practice and go over routines like beats and combos. After we will put it all together and have run through until it’s perfect.” said Hua.
Despite the long nights of practices and performances, lion dancing has Hua a high school experience like no other. Although she has made many sacrifices with regards to her school schedule and friends, she admits the most valuable part of lion dancing is to see the audience’s reactions to their performances.
“At performances being able to see the crowd, especially the little kids eyes, light up with excitement and just seeing how happy and excited they are to see us makes me want to continue even though I’m super tired,” said Hua.
This growing tiredness was reflected in this year’s season, as the team was booked with many performances back to back. Hua remembers how tired the whole team was, hungry and longing to rest for good. Her dancing team often has to face tough crowds who tend to invade the dancing area for pictures, as lion dancing is not ultimately a test of strength, but also a test of speed and stability.
“For me this year, we were out there performing every weekend after church and on Sundays weeks before Tet. The day before Tet was the day of Stagecoach, we were out at our first performance around 5 p.m. and we ended that day at around 1 in the morning. The next morning, we were out performing at around 9 a.m. with back to back performances. Everyone is tired and hungry but you have to remember that it’s a team effort so you have to help everyone out and not lose them through the crowds. The crowds are killers who show no mercy. They’ll be rude by pushing you around, getting in your personal bubble just to get a good view or to record so you’ll have phones stuck in your face or smacking you in the head to record the lions or kung fu,” commented Hua.
Despite this, Hua’s character has also changed greatly because of the great rigor her lion dance group involves her in. The ability to meet people around the county who involve themselves in this art is not just one benefit, but the idea of self-betterment and patience has also changed Hua for the long run.
“Lion dance has changed my character by not just looking after my friends, but for the whole team. It’s also taught me to be more patient with myself and that if you put out the time to practice, you’ll eventually get it to where you don’t really need to think, your hands will just play the beats perfectly,” said Hua.
This story was originally published in the 2020 RED Magazine.
