Blood, toil, tears, and sweat

Well, after this weekend, I can finally cross that first one off the list of things that lion dance has had to offer - oh, it's offered a lot of that first one last weekend, for sure. I certainly hope future lion dancers who get in that lion, affectionately "The Red Commie Wagon", don't mind that I was bleeding profusely in it. If anything, it adds to the character and history of that lion, eh?

And so, my last lion dance competition as an undergrad member of Columbia University Lion Dance comes to a close. Though I could not bring home to New York the title, I am eminently satisfied with how the weekend proceeded. I mean, I went to Brown, did tons and tons of lion dance, met many new people through an activity that I love, and enjoyed a meal with new friends and our genial hosts. Oh, and plus the Canadiens spanked the Bruins, and we still had 7 hours of the car left to go joyriding. Ah, c'est la vie!

Thinking back to the very first lion dance competition that Columbia hosted recalls quite the fond memories. I was but a freshman then, forever an upstart, incessantly bothering, goading for us to set up a competition. After all, what else would we do with all the time after our regular lion dance season? Actually work on getting better? Pshaw! I fondly remember constantly bothering our president at the time to go and contact other schools, preferably via phone or even in person (as she did end up doing with Cornell!), but with all of the doubt in the world as to whether this would work. Will other groups come? Could such an event succeed?

We were so focused on the planning and the organization, and so pleasantly surprised at just how many people ended up coming, that we didn't even think to work on practicing our welcoming set--and boy, did it show. Nevertheless, I will be forever happy that the event was a great success, forever thankful for all of the schools who came out to perform, forever proud that a broad, collegiate lion dance community could, and would exist. I will never forget Yale's tiny contingent, who couldn't manage to bring anything but themselves and needed to borrow all of our equipment and yet then proceeded to wow us all with a forward roll--something that back then, based on our collective reactions, none of us had ever seen before. Still to this day, we call our method of switching head and tail the "Cornell Switch," a nod of respect to the school that taught it to us.

And I will always point to that competition as a watershed for our own group, too, in terms of what we thought we were capable of. My captain turned to me, her usual smiling face both clearly filled with excitement and nervousness, and said, "Wow, every group here besides ours can do headsits and supertowers!" We held on to our fiercer, more traditional style, and broader, larger movements, on to our organization and origination of the event and our lack of practice time, but those badges of pride and these excuses could not hide my inner feeling that our group was being outclassed.

It wouldn't matter for long, though, as it soon became evident, through the group workshop segment of the competition, that many of these tricks were things that we were capable of, that we just never even thought to try. I landed my first headsits and shoulder stacks that day, both with traditional Columbia partners and with performers from other schools. I even completed my first forward roll with a Yale performer, as the Yale guys not only showed us how to do it but graciously offered to try it with us, with someone they've never practiced with before and only met on that day. I learned why every group had sashes besides ours--you kind of need them to actually do tricks--and thus sashes quite quickly became an important mainstay of our equipment bag. Seeing all of these other groups execute all of their fancy acrobatics, and then learning quickly that these were things we, too, were capable of, pumped all of our collective adrenaline, made us so excited for lion dance, so excited to bring our performance to the next level, so excited to practice all that we had learned that day, and then some.

My biggest regret in this regard is not hosting this event again in 2011. Those old enough will remember there was a gap year, there, before Penn then hosted the competition again in 2012. I really didn't think much of it before, but looking back: why didn't we host it again? Why didn't I, personally, fight for that competition, like I did freshman year? I certainly hope it's not a sign that I'm losing my willingness to goad, to bother, to incessantly upstart--I better not be losing my edge. In any case, I am very thankful that Penn decided to bring back the competition in 2012. Looking back, I could not be prouder.

Now, I look at this last competition through a different lens than the first: 3 years ago, I looked forward to all that I'd learn and improve upon in my coming years as a lion dancer. 3 years later, I can only reflect on what lion dance means to me: what the art has had to offer, what the people have to teach, what the community has that makes it special. I can only think about what will happen next: how my relationships with all of the people that I met will grow, how I can continue to embrace the tradition even after life makes it more difficult to do so, how I can truly connect with lion dance as an art, and share that art with all those around me.

I'll have more to say about that in the next post. For now, let me continue to reflect and reminisce, and, as I get in the lion dance head for the final weeks of my time as a Columbia university Lion Dancer, let me embrace the final, fourth item on that list that this great art has to offer.

Sweat? Absolutely. Toil? No question about it. Blood? In quite profuse amounts. Tears? Well, as the end of the year approaches, so they will come.