©2007
Bainbridge Island Chinese Connection
festival@bichineseconnection.org

Lion Dance 2008

Our talented Lion Dancers dance for merchants along Winslow Way throughout the Festival, and lead the Parade starting at 12:15pm.

The Lion dance is an expression of joy and happiness that is traditionally performed during the Chinese Lunar New Year Holiday. The Chinese Lion Dance goes back some one thousand years but has evolved into many variations of highly skilled and physically demanding routines.

The Mythological Chinese Lion represents strength, wisdom, good luck and it has the ability to drive away evil spirits. The lion dance is considered as a way to spread good blessings of heaven to people on earth.

Nowadays the Lion Dance is performed on Lunar New Year's day to bring good luck and prosperity. It is especially important for businesses to have the lion dance for them. Lion Dance is often seen at the opening of businesses, weddings, parades, birthdays, or breaking ground for a building.

All our Lion dancers and percussion players are volunteers from Bainbridge Island or are closely related to Island residents. We are grateful for their commitment of time and effort as their performance is now up to "authentic" Chinese standards. The lion dancers and accompanying drum and cymbal players need both stamina and strength as the performance is physically demanding, movements carefully match the intense music of drum, gong and cymbal. Each critical movement and music is synchronized, thus we have two teams of performers to relieve each other.

Many merchants in Winslow are eager to invite the lion to dance for their business. After the dance, the merchants need to feed the lion by tying fresh leafy greens on the tip of a long pole, hidden inside is the Hung Bao, a red envelope containing the gratitude payment from the merchants to the lion. The lion will perform "Eating the Green" and drop the green leaves around, symbolizing spreading the wealth within the premises. The generous gratitude from merchants will help cover part of the cost purchasing the Lion’s head, the drums, cymbal and gong. Your coming to the event and hearty applauses will be the reward to our volunteer Lion Dancers and their contribution to the people of Bainbridge Island.

Kids
Discovery
Museum

Bainbridge
Island
Lodging