Written by Shelly Cheng
Photos by Siqi Wei
Asian Culture Night was hosted by the Asian Student Union last Saturday, March 26 in Bemis Great Hall. The variety of performances contributed to an amazing cultural experience for Colorado College students. This event included performances from both CC students and Colorado Springs community partners.
Asian Culture Night began with brief introductions from the host and a student fashion show featuring CC students modeling Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Indian, and Vietnamese costumes.
Sophomores Rishi Lin and Winston Xu performed a guitar and piano duet piece from Hayao Miyazaki’s animation. Following this, Aiyu Zheng and Michael Wu also performed a duet of traditional Chinese instruments: Dizi, a flute made by bamboo, and Erhu, a two-string instrument with a snakeskin outer shell.
Gujarat from the Shakti Dance School in downtown Colorado Springs brought the audience two East Indian dances. The dancer wore a red and gold Sari and moved gracefully on the stage. She acted as the goddess and told the audience an ancient story from Hinduism.
Pikes Peak Aikido School illustrated some basic practices for the students. The instructor also quoted a famous sentence from a famous Japanese swordsman, Miyamoto Musashi, to elaborate on the essence of the practice, “The purpose of today’s training is to defeat yesterday’s understanding.”
The highlight of this whole event was the Dragon and Lion Dance, performed by the Colorado Asian Cultural Heritage Center from Denver. A troupe of more than thirty people participated in drum performances, including some seven-year-old children.
The dragon dance involved around eight dancers who controlled a giant, pink, puppet dragon as it chased a ball held by another dancer. The dragon loops over and over itself in accordance with the dancers’ movements. The crowd was amazed and could not stop applauding.
“That’s really awesome,” said a CC student in the audience in response to the dance. “I have never seen this type of dancing in my whole life.”
The Lion Dance was a favorite of the audience. It required collaboration between two dancers and a lot of practice. The lion costumes had giant heads with mouths that opened and closed and ears that flapped.
The dancers from the Colorado Asian Cultural Heritage Center interacted with the audience during the performances. The audience could feel the vitality and love for their cultures from the dancers.