CCBA New Year’s Banquet

February 16, 2010 by Adam.

Yesterday, after doing  two Lion dance performances at the Museum of Fine Arts, we also performed the opening ceremony for the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association’s New Year’s Banquet. I have been doing so many workshops geared toward people of non-Chinese descent that it has been a while since I have done a lion dance in its more natural setting. We did two lion heads and I even got one of my students to do more combos with me where we jump, stack on top of each other  to make the lion appear to suddenly reared up growing inhumanly tall, and then drop down and whirl around like a snake spinning in a curling tornado.

I appreciated the effort but I wished we had been practicing and performing this all along instead of waiting until now. (Although it does mean that today and everyday this week at the MFA we will perform this techniques.)

Maybe it was because I was tired before I even started the dance and so was slightly tranced out, because we were in China Pearl like so many lion dances we have done, maybe it was because as I look back in the head to the drum I saw that my Si Bak had suddenly appeared to play the drum (his Cantonese Music Association is also part of the CCBA so he happened to be there.) But I felt like I felt when I was first starting to do lion dance as a teenager learning about my Chinese Heritage.

The difference was of course was that instead of being unclear as to what to do, I confidently called out to Wingkay Leung (CCBA President) to get the lettuce from the Lion Head, instead of being afraid to communicate what needed to be done. It helped that I knew him from Crime Watch.  I also know Karen be caused she tried to tutor me when I was a very small child. (I was a terrible student.) Of course the Lion Gave her an orange.

And our team got a table which is a rare thing at these events. That’s probably the most fun I had as an adult at a banquet where we weren’t allowed to make a ruckus. It was good to be out of the house. I suppose I have started to think like an old man if I find these banquets to be a fun night out. But getting trashed at a club isn’t really that great when you think about it anyway.

-Adam

adam.cheung@bostonchinatowngateway.com

Posted in AROUND C-TOWN, LIFE AND STORIES OF ASIAN AMERICANS, WORD ON THE STREET | Print | No Comments »